How do normalization and internal optimization of boosting work? And how does that affect the relevance?

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I'm new to elastic search. I'm having trouble understanding the calibration and scaling of boost values for fields in a document. As in how should we decide the boosting values for field so that it works as expected. I've gone through some of the online blogs and es doc as well, it's written that es does normalization and internal optimization of boosting values? How does that work?

E.g.: If we have tags, title, name and text fields in our doc, how should we decide the boosting values for these?

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zachdb86 On

Elasticsearch uses a boolean model to match documents, and then a scoring model to determine relevance (i.e. ranking). The scoring model utilizes a TF/IDF score, coupled with some additional features. Those TF/IDF scores are calculated for each matching field within a query, and then aggregated to produce an overall score for a document. To dig into this process, I suggest running explain on your query to see how the score of each field is influencing the overall relevance of your document.

As the expert on your data, you're in the best position to determine which fields should most heavily influence the relevance of your document. Finding the right boost value for a field is about adjusting the levers until you find a formula that best suites your desired outcome (Also, if you have users, A/B testing can help here).