When Drupal does a content search, it optionally weighs the results using up to four scoring factors. These scoring factors include keyword relevancy, recency of the content, number of comments, and (if statistics module is enabled), the number of page views. Site administrators can adjust the relative weighting of these scoring factors from the example.com/admin/settings/search administration page. Setting any scoring factor to zero disables it.

In this article, which applies primarily to Drupal 6 but is relevant for Drupal 5 as well, I explore how useful these scoring factors really are, and whether they help Drupal search live up to the high standards that are set by leaders like Google and Yahoo!. This article is part of a series of search related articles in preparation for the Minnesota Search Sprint. Read full article »