Query Elevation — Pin, Exclude & Curate Your Search Results
Search Curation
Query Elevation — Take Control of Your Search Results
Pin the results you want at the top. Hide the ones you don't. No code, no reindexing, no waiting — changes take effect on the very next search.
What Is Query Elevation?
Query Elevation gives you direct control over which search results appear — and which ones don't. When a user searches for a specific term, your pinned documents appear at the very top, every time. Excluded documents are hidden completely. It works alongside your existing search relevancy, not against it — you're just overriding the order for specific queries where you know better than the algorithm.
The Three Actions
Pin
Forces a specific document to the top of results for a given search query. Pin multiple documents and drag-and-drop to set their exact order. Your most important page always shows first — no matter what the algorithm thinks.
Example: User searches "pricing" — pin your latest pricing page to position #1 so they always see current rates, not an old blog post about pricing changes.
Exclude
Hides a document from results for a specific query. The page stays in your index — it just won't show up when someone searches that particular term. Perfect for burying outdated content or irrelevant matches.
Example: User searches "returns policy" — exclude your old 2019 returns page that Solr still ranks highly because of keyword density.
Exclude All
Hides a document from every search — no matter what the user types. Use it for pages that should never appear in results: internal pages, test content, duplicates, or anything you want permanently buried.
Example: Your site has a "Print Version" of every page that keeps showing up in results — globally exclude all print pages so users only find the real ones.
How It Looks — The Elevation Toolbar
Every search result gets a toolbar when elevation is enabled. Here's exactly what you see:
Managing Rules — Query Analytics & Tools
All your elevation rules are managed from the Elevation Rules tab inside Query Analytics & Tools in your Opensolr dashboard. Every document shows its full title, URL, and description — not just raw Solr IDs.
Features of the Elevation Rules panel:
- Accordion layout — click a query to expand it, the rest collapse. Clean and fast, even with hundreds of rules.
- Rich document cards — every document shows its title, URL, and description pulled from your Solr index. No more guessing from raw document IDs.
- Filter buttons — instantly filter to see only pinned, only excluded, or all rules.
- Regex search — search across all document titles, descriptions, and URLs with regex support. Find any rule instantly.
- One-click remove — remove any rule with a single click. No confirmation dialogs, no friction.
- Refresh — reload rules without refreshing the whole page.
How To Set It Up
1
Enable Elevation
Go to your index settings in the Opensolr dashboard and turn on Query Elevation.
2
Open the Search UI
Navigate to your index's search page. Every result now has an elevation toolbar below it.
3
Pin or Exclude
Click Pin, Exclude, or Exclude All on any result. The rule takes effect on the very next search.
4
Manage in Dashboard
Review and manage all rules in the Query Analytics & Tools panel's Elevation Rules tab.
Key Behaviors
- Mutually exclusive — clicking Pin on an excluded result automatically removes the exclude first (and vice versa). No stale conflicts.
- Instant effect — rules apply on the next search request. No reindexing, no cache waiting, no restart.
- Per-query or global — Pin and Exclude work per-query. Exclude All works globally across every search.
- Drag and drop — reorder multiple pinned results for the same query by dragging.
- Works with everything — keyword search, hybrid vector search, filtered queries, faceted navigation. Elevation overrides the ranking for your specified documents regardless of search mode.
- Zero code — everything is done from the UI. No config files, no XML, no API calls needed.
Use Cases
| Scenario | Action | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Promote your latest pricing page | Pin to query "pricing" | Always shows first for "pricing" searches |
| Bury an outdated FAQ | Exclude from query "returns" | Hidden only for "returns" — still findable for other queries |
| Hide internal test pages | Exclude All | Gone from every search, permanently |
| Feature a seasonal product | Pin to query "gifts" | Top result during holidays, remove later |
| Suppress duplicate content | Exclude All the duplicate | Only the canonical version shows up |
Ready to Curate Your Search Results?
Enable Query Elevation in your index settings and start pinning and excluding results today.