Bury rules for slots

This is for:

Merchandiser

In this article

Use case examples
Prerequisites
Create bury rules
Modify bury rules
Delete bury rules

In the Recommendations manager of the Coveo Merchandising Hub (CMH), merchandisers can define bury ranking rules to make products that match specific criteria appear less prominently in recommendation slots. These criteria are based on product attributes that are available in the indexed metadata, such as brand, category, or price.

bury rules can also be scheduled for a specific time, letting merchandisers plan and execute strategies effectively.

Bury rule 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

Before you create rules in the Coveo Merchandising Hub (CMH):

In the Coveo Administration Console, map the metadata that you want to use as attributes in rules to the corresponding fields. These fields must have the Facet or Multi-value facet option enabled. For example, to use the color metadata as an attribute in a rule, map it to a field with the Facet or Multi-value facet option enabled.
Create query pipelines.
Choose the correct property to ensure that your changes affect the intended slots.

Create bury rules

To create bury rules

In the CMH, access the Recommendations manager.
From the navigation tabs, select ranking rules and then click Create ranking rule.
Under This rule will apply to, define the scope of the rule.
1. Locale: Select the locale that the bury rule applies to. By default, a rule applies to all available locales.
2. slot: Select the recommendation slot that the bury rule applies to, and then click Done.
  
  Note
  
  Currently, ranking rules can only apply to a specific recommendation slot.
Under Choose an action, select bury.
Under Attribute, select the attribute on which you want to apply the bury rule. For example, to affect the ranking of products by brand, select ec_brand.
Under Operator, select the operator that you want to use.
Under Value, select one or more attribute values that you want to use to affect product ranking. For example, to affect the ranking of products based on the ec_brand attribute, enter the brand value that you want to use, such as Barca Sports.

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 can create a bury rule that uses the ec_brand attribute and the Use "Same as product…" option to bury products from the same brand as the product being viewed. When a visitor views a Barca Sports product, the recommendation slot will bury other Barca Sports products.

Under bury strength, select how strongly you want to affect the ranking of products.

How strongly the products are affected by a given strength value depends on other ranking rules that are applied to the same slot.

The more ranking rules you apply to a slot, the more you must increase the strength value to have a significant effect on the products.

(Optional) To add more attribute-value pairs to the bury rule, click Add attribute and repeat the process.
For a recommendation slot using a seeded strategy, under Choose when to apply, select whether you want the rule to apply in any situation, or only if specific conditions are met.
Click Next: Review and publish.

Review your rule configuration.

Leading practices

Use the panel on the right to preview how the rule affects the products in 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 products for which you want to simulate recommendations to see the effect of the rule.

The preview is an approximate simulation that won’t cover every scenario encountered in a live environment.

Click Next: Publish.
Under Rule name, enter a meaningful name for your rule.
Under Choose when to publish, select one of the following:
- To apply the rule immediately, select Publish now.
- To set a schedule for the rule, select Set a schedule, and then select the time frame in which the rule should apply.
Click Publish now.

The rule now applies or will apply as scheduled.

Modify bury rules

To modify bury rules

In the CMH, access the Recommendations manager.
From the navigation tabs, select ranking rules.
Locate the rule that you want to modify.
Click , and then click Modify.
You can modify the rule’s scope (Locale, Audiences, or slot) or its configuration by clicking Edit on the relevant card. These are the same settings covered in the rule creation section.

The Audience option is currently in early access. Contact your Customer Success Manager (CSM) to enable this option.
When you’ve finished editing the rule, or to modify its publishing settings, click Next: Publish.
Update the publishing settings, if applicable, and then click Publish now.

The modified rule now applies, or will apply as scheduled.

Delete bury rules

To delete bury rules

In the CMH, access the Recommendations manager.
From the navigation tabs, select ranking rules.
Locate the rule that you want to delete.
Click , and then click Delete.
Click Delete again to confirm.

The rule is deleted.