Website Search Ranking
Website Search Ranking orders search results on our public website using a model of what pages mean, not only which words they contain.
Keywords
- Tags: Search
- Tags: Accessibility
- Tags: Embeddings
- Stage: Production
- Type: Sentence embedding model
- Sector: Public administration
- Language: English
How does our product work?
Every published page is converted into a numeric representation of its meaning when it is published. A search query is converted the same way, and pages are ranked by how close they are to the query.
The model ranks only pages we publish. It does not generate answers, and it cannot invent a service that does not exist.
Overview
People rarely search using the words a policy document uses. Keyword search punished them for that, and the most common outcome of a failed search was a phone call to the contact centre.
Ranking by meaning closed most of that gap. Searches ending in no click have fallen by roughly a third since it went live.
Owner and responsibility
More detailed information on the system
Here you can get acquainted with the information used by the system, the operating logic, and its governance in the areas that interest you.
System description
Ranking is recomputed on publication, so a corrected page is findable immediately. Query text is retained for 30 days in aggregate form only, to identify services people look for and cannot find.
References
Search quality evaluation against a fixed set of 500 real queries.