If your virtual replica showing fewer results than expected, it may be due to your relevancyStrictness.
Virtual replicas are optimised for the Relevant sort feature. Relevant sorting is used to only show the most relevant results for a user’s search instead of displaying all the records.Generally speaking, the sorting process in virtual replicas works with the following steps
- Select records matching the query with the help of the primary index ranking formula (hits)
- Select the hits that are in the relevancyStrictness bound (hits sorted)
- Sort and return the relevant results
Therefore, the difference in the number of hits returned between the two indices is due to the relevancyStrictness settings of your virtual replica. This setting controls the relevancy threshold below which less relevant results aren’t included in the results.
The default value of 100 means that the engine only returns and sorts the most relevant results. A value of 90 returns hits with 90% similarity as compared to the most relevant hit, 80 returns hits with 80% similarity etc.
You can access this setting the Configuration tab of your dashboard by searching for "Relevancy Strictness".