When you compare this explanation of how search works with the inputs for the federated search API, you’ll see that federated search inputs are lacking a few key meta data elements compared to community posts.
Specifically, these which could be provided as (optional) meta data to help index federated content equally to community content.
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Whether it’s an article
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Whether it has the best answer (if it’s a question)
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Tags
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Date of last update
It would be great to update the federated search API operation to accept these as optional fields, and to then use that data for a more complete comparison for relevance within the search algorithm.
Example use case:
Your documentation sits on a separate CMS (like much of Gainsight’s documentation). You want the documentation to rank highly in searches for keywords related to parts of your product.
Currently, community posts with those keywords are likely to rank more highly due to Tags, date relevance, likes, views, and other meta data.
Enabling the ability to indicate it’s an article and recently updated, as well as using equivalent tags to community posts, would bring it closer to parity with community content. In theory, that would help key documentation rank higher for related keywords.
