Server issues - point of no return, we move to Microcosm ASAP

How are search results sorted? Just seems to be a random order

Different items are given a different weight:

1. Microcosm titles score 1
   
2. Microcosm descriptions score 0.2
   
3. Profile names score 0.4
   
4. Conversation titles score 0.2
   
5. Comments score 0.1
   
   

The words are then stemmed, so that "ride" and "rides" and "riding" would all match along with valid unicode variations.

The index then matches the search terms against the stems by generating stems from the search terms and looking for those.

A rank is then generated based on the weight of each term in which part of the item it is being matched against.

The rank is then divided by the number of unique words in the document, and finally the proximity of the search terms to each other.

This is then ordered by rank, and the earlier score depending on location of the word provides a bias against comments and for forums, profiles, conversations and events.

From that the top 25 items are returned and the resultset calculated.

Then, from the 25, the documents are re-searched and the headline generated to show where the matches occurred.

Hashtag searches also filter a strict match... and do not score in the ranking algorithm (mixing hashtags with a search query will filter to the hashtag, but rank by the search terms).