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GSA sorting with over multiple metadata indexes

I am familiar with how to sort GSA results on metadata.

I'm interested in sorting across multiple indexes.

For example, sort by Last Name, then by First Name. So that Alice Smith appears before Bob Smith.

In SQL, this would be quite simple, equivalent to:

SELECT value FROM table ORDER BY last, first

Does GSA support this? I've been playing with a few different syntaxes, but haven't found a way yet.

If it's only possible to sort on one index, how does google sort within the set of equivalent results? e.g. How does GSA determine whether Alice or Bob appears first? I can't find any good explanation on this.

Solution

  • From what I can tell, GSA does not support multiple dependent sort order.

    Instead, I've built an additional meta index that combines the two indexes I want to sort.

    So, for example, I have index A for "First Name", index B for "Last Name", and index C which is the combination of both values into "Last Name"_"First Name".

    This seems to be working well for me so far.