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: Smart Answers and Smart Ranking are optional add-on features. If either feature isn't available for your account, contact your SearchStax Account Representative.
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.
How Smart Answers and Smart Ranking Differ
Smart Ranking changes the order of standard search results. Smart Answers generates an answer in a separate request, using relevant search results and your Ranking settings to prioritize source content. Test the Smart Answer and the standard result list separately.
Enable Smart Ranking
- Open your Search App in Site Search.
- Go to Configurations > Advanced 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 Optimizations > Smart Answers.
- Turn on Enable Smart Answers.
- Select Save Draft to keep the change as a draft, or Publish to make it live.
Smart Answers is configured per Search Profile. Enable and publish it only for the search experiences where you want Smart Answers available.
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 the Smart Answer is useful but the standard results shown with it are weak, confirm that Smart Ranking is enabled and published. Then rerun the same test queries and compare the standard result order.
If result quality gets worse, roll back the feature and fix the underlying relevance configuration first.