How to make sure that solr returns results sorted by location relevancy vs keyword relevancy

Question

I have a model that has a location and description/title, this info is indexed in Solr. When I search for the data I'm trying to have the relevancy to be by location first and then by keywords, however, I cannot seem to accomplish it - if both keywords and location are provided the results are sorted by the keywords first.

searchable do
  location :coordinates do
    Sunspot::Util::Coordinates.new(self.location.latitude, self.location.longitude) if self.location
  end
  text :title
  text :description
  ...
end

The searching is defined as such

  search.build do
    with(:coordinates).near(latitude, longitude, :precision=>radius)
    keywords "#{search_words}", :fields => [:title, :description], :minimum_match => 1
  end

If it helps, when keywords are not provided, results are already sorted by location

Answer 1

Try forcing the distance to take precedence to the keywords.

:score is an internal field that contains the Solr dismax score of each search result. Your default ordering will be by :score, :desc when you don't specify an order_by.

Putting in order_by_geodist(:coordinates, latitude, longitude) forces Solr to disregard the dismax score, so you get a distance ordering instead. Adding order_by(:score, :desc) afterward will take dismax score back into account, but only when distances are equal (or missing).

search.build do
  with(:coordinates).near(latitude, longitude, :precision=>radius)
  keywords "#{search_words}", :fields => [:title, :description], :minimum_match => 1
  order_by_geodist(:coordinates, latitude, longitude)
  order_by(:score, :desc)
end