#community-help

Issues With `text_match` Scoring for Search Queries in Typesense

TLDR Colin encountered issues with the text_match scoring on Typesense v0.23.1. Jason and Kishore Nallan identified a potential issue with numeric overflow in the text match score and applied an unverified patch. The final resolution is unclear.

17mo

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Jul 18, 2022 (17 months ago)

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Colin

05:50 PM

Hello 👋 I've got a question about how text_match is calculated on search 🧵

05:51

Colin

05:51 PM

if I'm searching "fox" with the options { query_by: 'fieldA, fieldB', query_by_weights: '20,1' } it looks like it's calculating the same text_match score for all the records returned here in the query.

05:51

Colin

05:51 PM

05:51

Colin

05:51 PM

my expectation here is that that second record we see here would have a higher text_match score since we have more occurrences of the search term on fieldA . Is there a way to make frequency effect the text_match score?

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Jason

05:56 PM

May I know which version of Typesense this is on?

Colin

05:57 PM

Typesense v0.23.1

Jul 19, 2022 (17 months ago)

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Kishore Nallan

03:09 AM

The weights are not added across fields but is used for prioritizing. If 2 records already match fully against the query on the highest weighted field, their text match score will be the same.

Prior to 0.23 we were summing up weights across fields but it led to various edge cases leading to noisy results.

Colin

03:45 PM

Is there any chance of getting this re-enabled? The way we need to rank our content would rely on making frequency of search term factor into the text_match score.

Kishore Nallan

04:03 PM

Can you post a real world example that shows exactly the behavior you want? For e.g. do you just want repeated tokens across field to be counted or do you have any other requirements?

Colin

04:12 PM

sure so for example here:

04:13

Colin

04:13 PM

I would expect this search to rank the second result above the first since more fields match, and there's more frequency of the term.

Kishore Nallan

04:17 PM

Got it, thanks. Let me look into what kind of effort we need to make this configurable and get back to you. Right now there is now way to have the old behavior.

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Mark

05:04 PM

Kishore Nallan is this current behavior really intended? how can they have the same text_match score when one of the results matches across more fields

here's another example that highlights the problem. the two results have the same text_match score despite "description" designated to receive higher weight

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Rebecca

05:21 PM

do you mind setting up a zoom call for us all to sync about this issue? Jason Kishore Nallan? this is a pretty big blocker for us

Jul 20, 2022 (17 months ago)

Kishore Nallan

09:36 AM

Jason will contact Rebecca, but in the mean time, I will summarize the 3 different issues in discussion here:

a) The very first example in the thread involving the fox query: Typesense does not count individual occurences of the tokens since that caused relevancy issues due to keyword stuffing in real-world data sets that can be noisy.

b) The second example involving the javascript query: since Typesense derives a text match score from the best matched field of a record, the scores are same here. This is something that I agree is not always ideal so we've to see how we can support a more fine-grain scoring that considers additional fields that match.

c) The java query: I've to check what's happening here as the category field is weighted lower so that record must appear ahead.

Mark

01:17 PM

thanks for investigating :bow:

Jason

02:36 PM

We have a potential fix that addresses b) and c). Would you be ok with us applying the patch on your cluster once it’s ready in an RC build?

Rebecca

02:39 PM

yep, we haven’t been able to launch this to production users yet so a patch should be fine

Jason

02:45 PM

Will keep you posted, RC should be ready in 24 hours

Jul 21, 2022 (17 months ago)

Jason

01:56 PM

We've applied the patch to your cluster. Could you try now?

Colin

02:34 PM

Jason I'm not seeing a difference in behavior, did you patch production?

Jason

02:35 PM

Yup production. Could you post screenshots of what results you now see for b and c? Along with the search params you're using?

Colin

02:43 PM

so this search for "javascript" with query_by=title,shortDescription,description

02:44

Colin

02:44 PM

we see that the text match score is exactly the same when the first record has all 3 fields matching and the second only has one

02:45

Colin

02:45 PM

would expect some difference in the score

Kishore Nallan

02:49 PM

Can you please copy + paste the content of the description field of the first result here?

Colin

02:52 PM

### Why learn JavaScript Errors and Debugging? This course will guide you through the basics of debugging and handling JavaScript errors to build a growth mindset approach to programming and prevent a crash in your applications! ### Outcomes: Learn how to debug your code and learn to predict and handle errors in your web applications. ### Note on Prerequisites: Intermediate JavaScript is a prerequisite, and you should be comfortable with arrays, objects, and looping through arrays.

Jason

03:22 PM

It looks like there might be some numeric overflow issues when assembling the text match score, which we’re looking into… But the results themselves should be sorted properly now.

03:23

Jason

03:23 PM

On a side note, the screenshot you posted above might be from 0.23.1. Could you make sure you’re running this search against your production cluster? On 0.24.0.rc22, the scores for your query should start with a 5

Colin

03:28 PM

this one is production and the one where 3 fields is ranked below one where 2 fields match

Jason

03:33 PM

Could you open up the browser dev console, look at the network requests generated to the .../api/... endpoint as you search, copy as curl the last request and DM it to me?

03:47

Jason

03:47 PM

Looks like you have "query_by":"description,longDescription,organizationId" in the query

03:48

Jason

03:48 PM

Could you try changing it to query_by=title,shortDescription,description in the search parameters panel at the bottom of the page?

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