Sharepoint 2013 Search Ranking and Relevancy Part 1: Let’s compare to FS14

I’m very happy to do some “guest” blogging for my good friend Leo and continue diving into various search-related topics.  In this and upcoming posts, I’d like to jump right into something that interests me very much, and that is taking a look at what makes some documents more relevant than others as well as what factors influence rank score calculations.

Since Sharepoint 2013 is already out, I’d like to touch upon a question that comes up often when someone is considering moving from FAST ESP or FAST for Sharepoint 2010 to Sharepoint 2013 :  “So how are rank scores calculated in Sharepoint 2013 Search as opposed to previous FAST versions”?

In upcoming posts, I will go more into “internals” of the current Sharepoint 2013 ranking model as well as introduce the basics of relevancy calculation concepts that apply across many search engines and are not necessarily specific to FAST…