# Reranking

Reranking seeks to improve search relevance by reordering the result set returned by a search with a different model.

Reranking computes a relevance score between the query and each data object, and returns the list of objects sorted from the most to the least relevant. Computing this score for all `(query, data_object)` pairs would typically be prohibitively slow, which is why reranking is used as a second stage after retrieving the relevant objects first.

As the reranker works on a smaller subset of data after retrieval, different, potentially more computationally expensive approaches can be used to improve search relevance.

:::callout{intent="info"}
Learn how to [set up a reranker for your collection](../how-to-manage-collections/generative-reranker-models.md#specify-a-reranker-model-integration) and [apply reranking to your search results](../how-to-query-search/rerank.md).
:::

## Reranking in Weaviate

With our reranker modules, you can conveniently perform [multi-stage searches](https://weaviate.io/blog/cross-encoders-as-reranker) without leaving Weaviate.

In other words, you can perform a search - for example, a vector search - and then use a reranker to re-rank the results of that search. Our reranker modules are compatible with all of vector, bm25, and hybrid searches.

### An example GraphQL query with a reranker

You can use reranking in a GraphQL query as follows:

```graphql
{
  Get {
    JeopardyQuestion(
      nearText: {
        concepts: "flying"
      }
      limit: 10
    ) {
      answer
      question
      _additional {
        distance
        rerank(
          property: "answer"
          query: "floating"
        ) {
          score
        }
      }
    }
  }
}
```

This query retrieves 10 results from the `JeopardyQuestion` class, using a hybrid search with the query “flying”. It then re-ranks the results using the `answer` property, and the query “floating”.

You can specify which `property` of the `JeopardyQuestion` class you want to pass to the reranker. Note that here, the returned `score` will include the score from the reranker.

## Further resources

:::callout{intent="info" title="Related pages"}
- [API References: GraphQL - Additional properties](../apis/graphql-additional-properties.md#rerank)
- [How-to search: Rerank](../how-to-query-search/rerank.md)
- [Cohere reranker integration](../model-provider-integrations/cohere-reranker.md)
- [Transformers reranker integration](../model-provider-integrations/transformers-reranker.md)
- [VoyageAI reranker integration](../model-provider-integrations/voyageai-reranker.md)
:::

## Questions and feedback

Have a question or feedback? Here's how to reach us.

::::card-grid
:::card{title="Community Forum" href="https://forum.weaviate.io/c/support" icon="messages-square"}
Ask questions and connect with other developers on our **Community forum**.
:::

:::card{title="Support" href="/guides/support-overview" icon="life-buoy"}
Weaviate Cloud user or customer? Find the right channel on the **Support page**.
:::
::::

## Related pages

- [Agents](./agents-index.md)
- [AI-assisted Weaviate code generation](./ai-assisted-vibe-coding-index.md)
- [APIs](./apis-index.md)
- [Authorization and authentication](./authorization-and-authentication-index.md)
- [Benchmarks](./benchmarks-index.md)
- [Best practices](./best-practices-index.md)
- [Client libraries](./clients-index.md)
- [Client Libraries / SDKs](./client-libraries-index.md)
- [Cloud](./cloud-index.md)
- [Cloud account management](./cloud-account-management-index.md)

# Agent Instructions

This portal answers questions programmatically. To receive a synthesized,
source-cited answer instead of crawling page by page, append the `?ask=`
query parameter to any page URL on this site:

    /guides/quickstart?ask=how+do+I+authenticate

Optional parameters:

- `&goal=<what-you-are-trying-to-do>` steers the answer toward your
  objective (e.g. `&goal=write+a+python+client`).
- `&version=<label>` scopes the answer to a mounted version when the
  portal publishes more than one.

The response is `text/markdown`: the answer followed by a `# Sources` list
of the portal pages it was grounded in. Status codes are the contract:

- `200` — the answer; `402` — the portal owner’s plan or answer credits are
  exhausted (surface this to your operator; do NOT retry); `429` — you are
  rate-limited; back off for the `Retry-After` seconds; `503` — the answer
  lane is temporarily unavailable; fall back to crawling the `.md` pages.

For the full corpus map read `llms.txt` at the site root; for the tool
surface (search + page fetch as MCP tools) see `/mcp`.