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 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.
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, non-slotted boost rules, and 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.
Although relevancy score is the default method used to order search results, you can change the order using attribute-based sorting options. When an attribute-based sorting option is in use, the relevancy score is not even calculated.