Keywords or Meta?

[kriss]

We want to improve our search results. What is the difference between using keywords "pinned" to articles versus using meta in knowledge articles? Currently, we use keywords to pin an article to the featured content area of the homepage and meta for words or phrases a user may type in their search string. After reading about search on the community, I see mention of pinning keywords to the articles themselves. Has anyone used keywords this way?   Does one work better than the other?

[servicenowkevin · Accepted solution]

kriss we use meta and pinned words at ServiceNow.

Pinned articles allow us to have certain articles appear on the top any time a word is used. As an example, the word Discovery always returns The Discovery and MID Server Resource Page (KB0540193). We do this for a small portion of our article set. The most important articles for a given word are pinned. We don't want to pin too many articles or use terms that are too broad as it can create a negative experience. As an example, the word "administer" would not be a good pinning word.

We use the meta field to increase relevancy of certain content. We'll use similar words, related terms, etc. We've also increased the weighting of that field to make it more impactful. The results are still part of the regular search result and are not distinguished in any specific way. A pinned article is set apart and the background is shaded more darkly to call attention to it.

You may find these blogs interesting:

• Featuring a "pinned" article at the top of a search result set in the Knowledge Base
• Using ts_weight to impact search relevancy in Knowledge

[kriss]

Thanks servicenowkevin! These articles, with the help of your explanation, give me greater insight.

[servicenowkevin]

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