Moving pages top of the SharePoint search results

Question

We are using SharePoint 2010 search and we would like to see aspx pages on top of the search result. Is that possible and how?

Answer 1

The short answer is yes, by using a custom ranking model.

To quote this blog post:

For example, if you want to promote result items of a specific type such as PDF documents, you can give search items with the file extension .pdf additional points.

There are a number of links to other resources about the subject at the end of that post.

Here is the MSDN page for the ranking model schema, and here is a question on the MSDN SharePoint forum that has several useful answers about how to use and work with ranking models.

I've never tried to work with custom ranking models myself, so I can't provide any personal insight or answers from experience, but it certainly seems as though it can be done.