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Ranking Search Results

The Flare search database generates organic search results and looks at numerous signals, factors, and metrics to determine how relevant the results are to the query terms. Understanding how searches are ranked in the different output types helps you determine strategies for optimizing your search results.

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Flare's search engine uses content signals and content weighting to determine search rankings.

Content Weighting

As with most search engines, Flare takes a variety of factors into account when ranking its search results. Since retrieved results are relative to the search query and indexed content, the table below describes in general terms how different content elements are ranked:

Content Elements	Description
Title Tags	The topic title lets readers know the topic of a particular page. It is placed in a <title> tag, within a <head> tag in HTML documents. You can add a topic title by right-clicking the topic in the Content Explorer, and selecting Properties from the context menu. In the Properties dialog, click the Topic Properties tab, and enter text in the Topic Title field. You also have the option to leave the Topic Title field blank. If you do this, the first topic heading will be used as the topic title by default. Topics with a keyword in the <title> tag always appear first in search results, and always are ranked higher than topics where a keyword appears elsewhere in the topic, regardless of how many times the keyword appears. This helps you find the most expected topics when running a search. note Note: If you do not have a <title> tag in your topic, Flare uses the text in first tag in your topic as the <title> tag. This text is given the same search ranking as a <title> tag, even if it is paragraph text or a lower heading level.
H1 Heading Tags	Keywords contained in an <h1> tag are given less weight than the topic title, but are still an important factor.
Subsequent Heading (H2-H6) Tags	The search engine also looks in topics for keywords in <h2> through <h6> tags. These tags are decreasingly less important to content ranking (e.g., <h2> receives a higher rank than <h3>, <h3> receives a higher rank than <h4>).
Abstract Text	The search engine looks at text in the topic's abstract. Keywords in the abstract receive the same ranking as keywords in <h2> tags. Note: This only applies to keywords in the meta description that you define in the topic's properties. If you do not set an abstract in the topic properties, Flare will generate an auto-abstract using the abstract character limit. However, this is not considered abstract text for search ranking purposes. Instead, these keywords are ranked according to their tags in the Flare topic (e.g, <p>, <h3>). See Adding Meta Descriptions for Topics and Setting the Search Abstract Character Limit.
Index Keywords in Topics	The search engine looks at topics for index keywords. Index keywords in a topic have the same weight as keywords in <h4> tags. Note: If you do not want index keywords to be considered when retrieving search results, you can exclude them from the search. See Excluding Index Entries From Search.
Glossary Terms	The search engine looks at topics for glossary terms. Glossary terms in a topic have the same weight as keywords in <h5> tags.
Keywords in the Body Text	Keywords that appear in the body text are ranked the same as keywords in <h6> tags.
Keyword Frequency	The search engine looks at how many times the search term appears in each topic. Topics with frequent keywords are ranked higher than topics with fewer keywords. Note: While topics with more frequent keywords are ranked higher, they will never outrank a keyword with a higher base weighting. Examples Example Let's say you have two topics that are almost identical. However, the search term appears in a Heading 2 three times in the first topic and only two times in the second topic. Because the search engine accounts for frequency, the first topic will appear higher in the search results than the second topic. Example Let's say you have two topics. In the first, your search term appears many times, all in Heading 4s. In the second it appears once, in a Heading 3. The second topic will appear higher in the search results because even though the search engine accounts for frequency, search terms that appear in a Heading 3 still take priority over search terms that appear in a Heading 4, regardless of how many total times they appear in the topic.