How to boost product attributes for your search experience
Boosting product attributes in the search experience lets you highlight specific characteristics (such as brand, category, or material) so that products matching those attributes rank higher when shoppers use certain queries. When shoppers search for terms related to these attributes, matching products can be configured to appear more prominently on the search engine results page (SERP), while still respecting organic relevance. By applying boost rules to key attributes instead of individual products, you can systematically promote entire groups of items that align with your current merchandising strategy or campaigns across multiple search journeys.
In Empathy Platform, product attributes boosting is managed from the Playboard using the Results Ranking management tool, so you can adjust product positions and immediately see the impact on the search results page.
interact
Willing to know more about all that you can do by using Results Ranking? Check the Results Ranking management tool page to discover it.
Boosting product attributes for your search experience
Imagine your clothing store wants to prioritize black items because they are your best‑selling color for formal wear. When shoppers search for queries like “dress”, “trousers”, or “blazer”, you can apply an attribute boost to the color “black” so products with this color value appear higher on the SERP than the same items in other colors. This way, you systematically surface the most in‑demand color variant for many different products and queries, without manually boosting each individual product.
To boost this product attribute in your search experience, perform the following steps:
Open your Playboard and go to Play > Results Ranking.
Click the + New button in the top left corner to create a new Results Ranking configuration. The Configuration panel displays.
In the Details section, make sure the toggle button is switched on so that the configuration is active once it's saved.
note
If you turn off the configuration, you can turn it on later using the action tools in the results ranking list screen.
Enter a name for your configuration. For example, "Office outfits".
Select the endpoint your configuration relates to. In this case, select the Search endpoint.
In the Endpoint section, indicate the search queries that the boost configuration should apply to. For example, you can type "midi dress" and "formal blazer".
Select the desired options for the filters to customize the scenario for your configuration. Remember that the available filters depend on your implementation. For this example, select "English" for the Language filter.
In the Settings section, go to Product Ranking to configure a soft ranking. Soft ranking modifies product positioning by slightly increasing the score of products whose attributes are being boosted, causing them to appear higher on the SERP.
- Click the + (plus) icon. The Product ranking pop-up window appears.
- Choose whether the configuration should be always active or scheduled for a determined period. For this example, set the configuration to be always active.
note
Review the steps in Scheduling a configuration to learn how to schedule product ranking configurations.
- Select a product attribute and a value for it. You can search for the attributes and values to find the desired ones. If an attribute doesn't have any value available, you cannot create a configuration for it. In the example, the category is "color" and the value is "black".
- Click the Boost button to add the configuration to the list.
In the Preview section, review the product ranking as it will appear to your shoppers. Optionally, enter a keyword in the search box to narrow down the results. You can also select a date to preview the results for a specific time and check product positions in real time based on your configuration. Results update automatically as you make changes to the configuration.
Once finished, click Save to apply the configuration. The saved configuration is displayed in the configuration list on the main Results Ranking screen.