---
title: Customize my DocSearch
---

## What content do we recommend to index?

### Code blocks

We **do not recommend** indexing **code tags** since code blocks are most likely
very similar and redundant from one page to another.
You can exclude code blocks by adding their matching selectors to `selectors_exclude`.

A good practice would be to emphasize the meaningful underlying part of it
thanks to a dedicated class, which you will want to add to the `text` selector
in your configuration file.

For example, in this code snippet, you can exclude the code but the parameters of the function:
```
<code>
function(<toIndex>something useful to search for</toIndex>)
...
</code>
```

### Table of contents

The elements of the table of contents only *target* but do not provide content.
They are merely a step on the way to reaching relevant content. As a result, they are
almost always in a different place from the payload. This is why we consider the
table of contents an obstacle for DocSearch to find the coveted information.

We therefore **do not recommend** indexing the elements of the table of contents; their matching
selectors should be added to `selectors_exclude`.

## How are my DocSearch records ranked?

DocSearch empowers the Algolia ranking strategy. The formula is completely
based on [the tie-breaking approach](https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/ranking/ranking-formula/#tie-breaking-approach).

The special feature of DocSearch's ranking resides in [the custom ranking](https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/ranking/custom-ranking/):

We have defined 3 main weight indicators for every record. These values are
ordered by importance following the tie-breaking approach:
1. `page_rank`: this value, equal to `0` by default, can be set from the
`start_urls` object. It can be customized in order to boost or restrain some
records depending on **their webpage's URL**. It will need to match a **specific
regular expression pattern**.

**Example:**
 ```json
{
   "index_name": "example",
    "start_urls": [
     {
      "url": "http://example.com/docs/api/v1\\.[0-9]",
      "page_rank": 1
     }
    ]
}
```
2. `level`: this value depends on the `level` of the record. A record's level is
its **deepest level attribute not null**. `text` records have a weight of 0.
3. `position`: This value is the position of the matching element within every
picked up element along the original HTML flow. The **sooner** the record appears,
the **higher** it will be ranked.

You can override the way these elements are impacting the search thanks to `custom_settings`.

 **Example:**

 ```json
"custom_settings": {
  "customRanking": [
  "asc(weight.position)",
    "desc(weight.page_rank)",
    "desc(weight.level)"
  ]
}
 ```