Make Sharepoint Online search show contacts at top of results

Question

We maintain our student list as a Sharepoint list that was initially based off the Contacts type. We recently migrated to Sharepoint Online from Sp 2010, and the contentclass for these items is STS_ListItem_Contacts.

I'd like to have it so that the search bar at the top of our homepage, returns these list items first. I tried creating a Result Source with the query transform "contentclass=STS_ListItem_Contacts {SearchBoxQuery}" (query builder test returned expected results). Then, I added a Result Type with my Students source. That Result Type shows a priority of 1.

When I try searching for a student now, I see the result in the 15th position. How do I get that to the top?

Answer 1

You can follow this document to build query rules and promote the Contacts results to top, or use a Result Block to collect the results for Contacts as a subset: Manage query rules.

Please note that classic search experience is no longer available for a site (collection). You can only apply this query rule in the global search center (for the whole tenant) currently.