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Sorting by Relevance

Relevance sorting is based on the AltaVista relevance algorithm, which considers the order in which a particular word is indexed in a record. Fields are indexed in the following order:

  1. titles
  2. authors
  3. subjects
  4. notes
  5. other
Relevance is based on the following criteria:

Single Word Searches

  • Most relevant: word is in the first 8 words indexed for the record.
  • Next most relevant: word is in the next 24 words indexed (i.e., words 9-32).
  • Next most relevant: word is indexed more than once for the record.
Multiple Word Searches

Words are first sorted in ascending order by frequency in the index.

  • Most relevant: first two words are very near each other in the record.
  • Next most relevant: first two words are near each other.
  • Ties are broken using the criteria for single word searches.


Contact page author: Sharon Saunders
Date:8/18/2009
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