---
title: "Understand relevancy score"
slug: "understand-relevancy-score"
abstract: "Description of relevancy score, and explanation of how Sitecore Search uses it to assemble results at runtime."
---
# Understand relevancy score

By default, Sitecore Search uses a calculated value called the *relevancy score* to determine the order that search results are displayed.

The relevancy score is a single value that is calculated dynamically using features such as textual relevance, personalization, ranking, and bury and boost rules. It is assigned to each content item in a results set, and is used to determine how relevant each item is to the visitor's search. Items with a higher relevancy score appear higher in search results.

Whenever a visitor performs a search on your site, any [textual relevance](https://doc.sitecore.com/search/en/users/search-user-guide/display-relevant-results.html "Display relevant results") settings you've defined are applied to the result set. This determines the base score for content items based on how well they match the keyphrase.

> [!note]
> If you have not configured textual relevance, or if the visitor does not enter a keyphrase, all items start with a base score of *1*.

Once the base score is set, [personalization](https://doc.sitecore.com/search/en/users/search-user-guide/personalize-results/understand-personalization.html "Understand personalization"), non-slotted boost rules, and [ranking](https://doc.sitecore.com/search/en/users/search-user-guide/personalize-results/understand-search-ranking.html "Understand search ranking") are applied in no specific order. These modifiers adjust the base score using criteria you set.

Finally, bury rules are applied. This happens last to ensure that other modifiers do not resurface buried items.

A calculated relevancy score might change over time depending on visitor actions. For example, if a visitor to sitecore.com navigates to the XM Cloud homepage, that visitor's affinity for *XM Cloud* and *CMS* increases, causing the relevancy of content items related to those terms to increase for that visitor as well.

> [!note]
> Although relevancy score is the default method used to order search results, you can change the order using attribute-based [sorting options](https://doc.sitecore.com/search/en/users/search-user-guide/personalize-results/sorting-options.html "Sorting options"). When an attribute-based sorting option is in use, the relevancy score is not even calculated.