Enable Smart Answers and Smart Ranking after your baseline search relevance is already in good shape. These features can improve result quality, but they work best when Search Fields, Ranking, Stop Words, and Spell Check are already configured and validated.
Before You Enable These Features
Confirm the following first:
- your Search Fields are configured and validated in Preview
- your baseline Ranking settings produce sensible top results
- Stop Words and Spell Check are configured if your use case needs them
- you have a small query set you can use to compare before-and-after behavior
Note: Do not use Smart Answers or Smart Ranking as a substitute for missing baseline configuration. If the wrong fields or filters are driving results, fix that first.
Enable Smart Ranking
- Open your Search App in Site Search.
- Go to Configurations > Basic Configurations > Ranking.
- Turn on Smart Ranking if it is available for your account.
- Save and publish the change.
Use Smart Ranking as a baseline enhancement, then validate whether the reordered results align with user intent.
Enable Smart Answers
- Open the relevant Search Profile.
- Go to the Smart Answers configuration for that profile.
- Enable Smart Answers for the experience you want to test.
- Save and publish the change.
Smart Answers is a profile-level experience choice. Enable it only where it fits the search experience and content.
Validate Results Quality
- Run the same baseline query set you used before enabling the feature.
- Check whether the highest-value queries improved or regressed.
- Review whether answer-style responses are accurate and appropriate for the experience.
- Confirm ranking changes still support the expected content priorities.
If result quality gets worse, roll back the feature and fix the underlying relevance configuration first.