Bury rules for slots

This is for:

Merchandiser

In the Recommendations manager of the Coveo Merchandising Hub (CMH), merchandisers can define Bury ranking rules to make products that meet specific criteria appear less prominently in recommendation slots.

These criteria are based on product attributes available in the indexed metadata, such as brand, category, or price.

Create bury rules for recommendation slots | Coveo

Use case examples

Bury ranking rules can be used to address a variety of use cases. Here are a few examples:

  • Bury out-of-season products: Lower the ranking of products that aren’t currently in season.

  • Demote discontinued products: Lower the ranking of products that are being phased out.

  • Bury low-margin products: Lower the ranking of products with low margins.

  • Demote out-of-stock products: Lower the ranking of products that are out of stock.

Prerequisites

To create rules, merchandisers must ensure they have properly configured their query pipeline and chosen the correct tracking ID to ensure that their changes impact the intended slots.

Create a bury rule

To create a rule:

  1. In the CMH, access the Recommendations manager.

  2. From the navigation tabs, select Ranking rules.

  3. Click Create ranking rule, and then, select For a specific slot.

    Note

    Currently, ranking rules only apply to specific recommendation slots.

  4. Select the Locale for which the bury rule will apply, and then click Done. By default, a rule applies to all available locales.

  5. Select the Slot to which the bury rule will apply, and then click Done.

  6. Under Choose an action, select Bury.

  7. Under Attribute, select the attribute on which you want to apply the bury rule. For example, if you want to affect ranking of products based on the brand attribute, select brand.

  8. Under Operator, select the operator that you want to use.

  9. Under Value, select the attribute value on which you want to apply the bury rule. For example, if you want to affect ranking of products based on the brand attribute, enter the brand value that you want to use, such as Barca Sports. Note that you can select multiple values for the attribute.

    • For a recommendation slot using a seeded strategy, you can select the Use "Same as product…​" option to use a dynamic value. For example, on a PDP, you could create a Bury rule that uses the brand attribute and the Use "Same as product…​" option to bury products from the same brand as the product being viewed. If a visitor is viewing a Barca Sports product, the recommendations slot will bury other Barca Sports products.

  10. Under Adjust Bury strength, select how much you want to affect the ranking of products.

    Important

    The extent to which the products are affected by a given strength value depends on other ranking rules that are applied to the same recommendation slot.

    The more ranking rules are applied to a slot, the more the strength value must be increased to have a significant impact on the products.

  11. (Optional) If you want to add more attribute-value pairs to the bury rule, click Add attribute and repeat the process.

  12. For a recommendation slot using a seeded strategy, select Choose when to apply the rule. Either n any situation, or add a condition to apply the rule only if specific conditions are met.

  13. Click Next: Review and publish.

    Tip
    Leading practice

    You can preview the effect of your rules by using the Preview panel on the right side of the page. You can use this panel to see how the rule affects the products on the recommendation slot for a given locale.

    If you’re previewing a rule for a recommendation slot using a seeded strategy, you must choose the product(s) for which you want to simulate recommendations to see the effect of the rule.

  14. Review the rule configuration, and then click Next: Publish.

  15. Under Publish your rule, enter a meaningful name for the rule.

Manage existing pin rules

To manage an existing pin rule:

  1. In the CMH, access the Recommendations manager.

  2. From the navigation tabs, select Ranking rules.

  3. Locate the rule you want to manage.

  4. Click Modify. You now have to option to modify the rule configuration, modify the publish settings, or delete the rule:

    • To modify the rule configuration, click Rule.

    • To modify the publish settings, click Publish settings.

    • To delete the rule, click Delete.