I love that I always find top brands on the first page of my search

Product ranking lets you boost or bury the positioning of specific products of the product catalogue. Product ranking can be used to promote or demote specific products and the place they appear on both the search engine results page (SERP) and the product category pages (PCP).

You can boost a product so that it appears among the first positions of the results list. Alternatively, you can bury a product so that it appears on the last positions. Product ranking can be used to highlight key products that you want to promote for a given period or hide those that offer less profit margins, for example.

For product ranking on the SERP, you indicate the specific search query you want to be associated with the product boost or bury; the search term must appear in the searchable fields for the product in your product catalogue.

For example, for the search query “black dress”, by default, the best selling black dresses are shown in the first positions of the results list. You want to promote a specific model, “Linen-blend A-line black dress” that currently appears on the second page of the results, since it has a lower popularity compared to other results. You can use the Boost option to send the product to the first position of the results, regardless of its organic product scoring and dynamic relevance.

You can alter the organic product ranking with the Query Ranking management tool of the Empathy Platform Playboard. Boost or bury products and product attribute values and preview how your shoppers will see the results list to adapt them to your business needs. You can also choose to boost or bury several products at the same time using the Quick Boosting functionality. In addition, products are organized in the order in which you boost or bury them; however, you can rearrange the order by dragging and dropping the products as required.

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Discover more about how to Boost or bury products with Query Ranking.

Popularity is key to influencing product relevancy: the more clicks, the higher the product position on the SERP. However, when you need to promote a brand's seasonal product offer, collective behavior isn't enough to arrange products on the SERP the way you need.

Imagine that a vehicle accessories brand has just launched a new line of snow chains that are trendy as the result of an aggressive marketing campaign during the winter season. As the manager of a prestigious online tire and vehicle accessories retailer, you don’t want to be behind your competitors in terms of sales. Thus, you need to show shoppers the new line of products in the first positions of your commerce store results page.

• What can you do?
  You can orientate your shoppers' search and discovery experience by improving search product results ranking and relevance.

• How can you do it?
  You can change the organic position of products on the SERP by increasing the scoring of certain products. As a heavy snowstorm is forecasted for next week, you can place these trendy snow chain products in the first positions of your results page by creating a hard query ranking configuration to boost all the new line products. Thus, all snow chains for this brand's new line show up on top of the SERP results when shoppers look for snow chains for their next week's routes.

Note that boosting several products with a hard query ranking configuration isn't the only way to make specific products stand out in your shoppers' search and discovery journeys. You can also take advantage of other Empathy Platform search features, like Promotions or Attribute ranking to optimize the shoppers' discovery journeys—for example, by boosting particular product attribute values that are related to a specific season of the year when their demand and sales usually increase.

Spot the difference

Product Ranking, Attribute Ranking, and Equalize all affect the positioning of product results. However, their purpose is different. Product Ranking is designed to give a one-off boost to (or downgrade) individual products, making them appear at the top or the bottom of the list. Attribute Ranking is used to boost or bury groups of products associated with a specific product attribute value, whereas Equalize determines the overall weighting of the product attributes in the search results. This last is not related to any query while Product Ranking and Attribute Ranking are.

Try Product Ranking to…

• Bring products to the top of the results list for a specific search query.
• Feature key products in the first page of your product category page according to merchandising goals.
• Override organic product scoring for individual products in a single click.
• Hide deeper in the results products that offer lower margins, are out of stock, or are new season items that you don’t want to promote during sale time.

The inner workings of Product Ranking

When you boost a specific product, the product’s organic score is altered by adding 1,000,000 points, pushing the product to the top of the results list. In the same way, if you bury a product, the product score is multiplied by 0.0001, causing it to be placed in the last position of the results.

If you boost several products at the same time, the boosted products are ranked based on the order of boosting, and the points added to each of them are doubled (1,000,000 points for the last busted, 2,000,000 for the second, and 3,000,000 for the first in the list). The same happens to buried products: the score of the third product buried is multiplied by 0.0001, the second buried is multiplied by 0.0002, and the first in the list is multiplied by 0.0003. You can change the order of the boosted or buried products, and the corresponding points will automatically change.

For example, the product “Green Tied-front T-shirt” has an organic product score of 15,000 points. You decide to boost this product, which adds 1,000,000 points to the product score. The new product score is 1,015,000, pushing the product to the top of the results list. On the other hand, if you downgrade the same product, the product score is multiplied by 0.0001, resulting in a product score of 1.5 points and pushing the product to the bottom of the list.

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Product Ranking is not the only criteria that influences a product's overall scoring. Learn more about scoring criteria on Product Scoring.