How does Knovel determine Search relevancy?

Knovel’s relevancy and ranking algorithms factor in multiple elements that include:

• Term frequency
• Term proximity (closeness of terms to each other)
• Order of terms
• Term density (ratio of terms to length of content)
• Weights assigned to fields where matches are found
• Lexical variants (plural/singular, verb tense, UK/US)
• Synonyms
• Publication date
• Metadata associated to the content’s hierarchical component structure, e.g., book > chapter > table.

The order of the above elements is not indicative of their weight in the algorithm. All elements are considered as part of the relevancy and ranking determination.

Generally, however, Knovel gives top-most ranking to exact phrase matches.