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Steps

  1. Go to Sort Orders and select a sort order.
  2. Use Preview to see how a collection will look.
  3. Review the sort effect annotations on each product to understand why it appears where it does.
  4. Adjust settings if something doesn’t look right.
  5. Save changes when you’re happy.

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Sort effect annotations

The preview panel shows annotations on each product so you can see exactly which sorting rules affected its position. Each annotation corresponds to an expression in your sort order configuration.

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What you’ll see

  • Promoted by #N (green badge) — a priority rule in position N promoted this product toward the top of results.
  • Demoted by #N (red badge) — a priority rule in position N demoted this product toward the bottom of results.
  • Boosted badge — appears when a soft boost matched. The badge label shows the concrete effect: Boosted +N positions when the product moved up in the ranking, or Boosted +<lift> when the boost changed the score without changing rank. If a soft boost matched but had no measurable effect, the badge simply reads Soft boost.
  • Boosted image overlay — a small Boosted badge appears on the product image when at least one soft boost matched. Use it to quickly spot which products in the grid were lifted.
  • Metric values — when your sort order includes a metric or numeric attribute, the actual value used for sorting appears next to each product. Date attributes (like published_at) are rendered as human-readable dates instead of raw epoch timestamps. When the sort uses segmented metrics, values are tagged Segmented (…) so you can see which segment the number came from. Hover over the value to see which metric it belongs to.
The position number (#N) refers to the expression’s order in your sort order configuration, starting from 1. This makes it easy to trace each annotation back to the rule that caused it.

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Scoring details on hover

Hover any product in the preview to open a scoring card that breaks down how its final score was assembled. For each matched soft boost the card shows:
  • Base value — the score before the boost applied, formatted as a date when the underlying attribute is a date.
  • Position change — the product’s rank before and after the boost, e.g. #42 → #11 (+31).
  • Lift — the magnitude the boost added to the score.
  • Score — the final score after the boost.
Use this to tell apart boosts that only shifted the score from boosts that actually moved the product up in the ranking. It also confirms which base value (global or segmented) the boost applied to.

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How to use annotations

  • Verify priority rules: Confirm that the correct products show a “Promoted” or “Demoted” badge for each rule.
  • Tune soft boosts: Check that soft boost badges appear on the expected products and compare the reported position change or lift across products to gauge the effect. Hover to see the base value, position change, and final score. If products you expect to boost show no position change or zero lift, raise Boost Strength or the Percentile Target.
  • Debug unexpected ordering: If a product appears higher or lower than expected, its annotations reveal which expressions influenced its position.
Hover over metric values and badges to see a tooltip with the full label of the sorting expression. This is especially helpful when your sort order has multiple metrics or rules.