Sidebar Search - Sort by Relevance

Hey! It would be nice if we could sort the sidebar (document-individual) search results by relevance, just as we can with the heat mapped score when using the general search feature. I understand the sidebar search currently sorts only by page number.

Relevance could be determined by locations (pages/paragraphs) that have the most hits. For example: if page 450 (or even summing up 449/451 results) of a PDF has 4 hits, it barely makes sense having to go through several pages of scattered and individual hits before reaching page 450, which would probably be more relevant. I reckon DT has readily available access to this information, as it is all in the sidebar search results.

Would something like this be possible?

Thanks!

Possible, likely but it’s the first request I can recall. Development would have to assess the feasibility and broader interest.

Revisiting this! I have found that a similar feature in PDF Search App saves me a LOT of time when performing searches. Too bad that App doesn’t check all the other boxes DT checks!

This fragment from their support page can better explain what I meant in my original post:

How Search Works

The PDF Search algorithm calculates a ranking value for each page in the documents based on the keywords you enter. These ranks are calculated as follows:

  • Keyword Distance : Pages with keywords that are close to each other rank higher.
  • Keyword Density : Pages with more keywords rank higher.
  • Importance : Pages that contain keywords in the title or are created in bold or larger font will rank higher.
  • Document Date: Pages from newer files rank higher than older files.

When a search is complete, PDF Search displays the highest ranking page, highlighting keywords by color.

So instead of showing search results in the PDF page order, they show them in the ranked order. This is a total game changer when working with long PDFs.

Please tell me a part of this is somewhere in the product roadmap ;-). If it is not, everyone chime in if this might be useful for you!

Thx!

Sorry but no, this is not on our roadmap. It’s the first such request I recall seeing.
Noted, but not promises.

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