Modern Search - Order in People Search Result

[Philine von Guretzky]

Trying to understand the order people are displayed in in a search result.

Searching for staff in certain area gives me a good selection, I would like to understand the order though.

Is there a way to list them alphabetically or in any other order?

And can I remove people/ contacts listed in a search result?

I have looked, but could only find answers for the classic search and not modern search.

Any pointers appreciated!

[#2]

Hi Philine,

The order that the people show up in the search results is relevance driven. I wouldn't be able to give you an exact rundown of how relevance is calcualted, but it takes into account various types of matches, including match on the name, title, position as well as match on skills, projects etc.

There is currently noway to remove results from people search in the modern search experience. @Kathrine Hammervold, @Bernt Ivar Olsen for more details once they are back from vacation.

[#3]

Hi Alina, @Kathrine Hammervold, @Bernt Ivar Olsen 

Don't want to split hairs, but looking at other users search results with the same query I can't see a difference in relevance. All poeple are listed in the same order when using dfferent user accounts to do so.  And that order does not make any 'sense', eg no obvious closer connection to staff listed at the top, not A-Z or whatever it might be weighted by.

We are tweaking entries in the AD and user profile to improve search results. I have noticed that the Office field plays a role in listings, however the adress fields eg city / country doesn't. Odd, but good to know.

Is there a list where we can see what other fields in the AD are used/not used for search?

Thanks

[#4]

Currently the relevance is not personalized but rather based on a set of overall weights that are the same for all users in the company. There is work being done by the team that owns search to make the results more personally relevant to the user that is searching, but I'll have to defer to @Kathrine and @Bernt to provide more details on this.

[#5]

Thanks Alina

[#6]

Hi Philine,

I am curious to learn if you ever figured out how the People Search Results are ordered and if it is possible to exclude items from the results. I find that the results contain many items which are not actually "real-people" e.g. meeting rooms or system accounts. I would like to exclude these results not to confuse the end-users with non-relevant items.

Thanks in advance for your help in case you can point me in the right direction. 

[#7]

Unfortunately, not.
And I have not looked into this further, since there will be quite a few changes to search coming fairly soon I believe.
It is still not obvious to me how people are weighted/ordered in the results. I see people at the top with whom I have never been in touch with.
To get around not listing 'real-people' for the moment, we make sure to search for additional info from the Active Directory eg, a location or a team name, generally rooms and email don't have this logged.