SOAP API search Reference

Three of the functions for searching (search, which performs a normal search, moreLikeThis, which finds similar pages, and showParents, which shows which pages link to a page) take similar parameters:

• jump - number of user-visible results to skip. 0 would return the first page of results, 10 the second page, etc. (assuming 10 results per page).

• order - specifies how the results should be ordered. Possible values are: r - sort by relevance (default) dd - newest pages first da - oldest pages first

RankKnobs structure

There's an optional "rankKnobs" parameter for many of the functions that can specify how things should be ranked (each function notes whether it accepts rankKnobs). All of these can be set from 0-1000, where the higher the value, the more heavily that aspect is weighed; 500 is the default. These parameters correspond directly to the "Ranking Factors" settings on the Advanced Search page.

RankKnobs has the following parameters:

• order - importance of the words being in the proper order

• proximity - importance that the words are close together

• dbFreq - importance of the frequency of a word in the database

• docFreq - importance of the frequency of a word within the document

• leadBias - importance of closeness to the start of the document

• depthBias - importance of "shallowness" (fewer links from a Base URL)

• dateBiasWeight - Date bias weight: Favors "newer" results (closer to dateBiasAnchor i.e. now). Additional parameters:

  • dateBiasHalfLife - Date bias decay rate: time for dateBiasWeight to be halved, in seconds

  • dateBiasAnchor - Date bias reference point: "best" date for maximum rank; can be lastWalkFinished for completion date of last successful walk, or Texis-parseable date

  • dateBiasField - Date bias field: date field to use for computing document age (default Modified)