When debugging relevancy issues, the Algolia dashboard provides several visual tools to help you understand why records are ranked the way they are for a given query. This guide walks through how to use the Ranking Criteria panel, and explains each ranking criterion you may encounter.
Using the Ranking Criteria panel
In the Browse tab on the Algolia dashboard, each record in the results list includes a small medal icon at the bottom-right corner.
When you hover over this icon, a panel appears showing the ranking criteria and their values for that record.
This panel explains exactly why a record is ranked in its current position relative to others, by displaying how it performed for each ranking criterion:
The criteria are shown in the same order as your Ranking and Sorting configuration, which is important: Algolia ranks results using a tie-breaking algorithm that evaluates records sequentially across ranking criteria, stopping as soon as one criterion produces a difference between records.
You can change the order of the default criteria, but you shouldn’t. The out-of-the-box ranking order is best for the majority of use cases.
Below is a breakdown of what each Ranking criterion means and how to interpret its value in the ranking panel:
Number of typos: Typos required to match the query
Geolocation: Distance from the search location
Matching words: Number of query words matched
Matching filters: Number of filters matched
Proximity distance: Distance between matched words
Best matching attribute: Attribute matched, by priority
Position: Position of matched words in the attribute
Exact word count: Number of exact (no-typo) matches
Custom ranking: Custom ranking value defined by your business metrics (e.g., popularity, ratings)
The ranking criteria panel helps you clearly understand why a record ranks where it does and pinpoint the source of any relevancy issues.
Query Alternatives view
Combined with the Ranking Criteria panel, using the Query Alternatives view, gives you a more complete picture of how Algolia interprets queries and ranks results.
If you toggle Query Alternatives on the dashboard, you can see how Algolia interprets the query you typed:
For a detailed walkthrough, see How to use the Query Alternatives view in the Algolia Dashboard.