Merchandising rules let buyers, marketers, and category managers override the ranker for specific queries or contexts. “For the query ‘gift’, pin the holiday gift guide at position 1.” “Boost in-house brand products by 1.5× for category browse.” “Bury out-of-stock items below position 10 instead of hiding them.”
Good merchandising tooling supports: targeted boosts (per query, per segment, per device), pin/bury (force a specific position), replacement (swap result for a curated set), time-window scheduling (Black Friday banner only between specific dates), and audit logging (who pinned what, why, when).
The danger is rule sprawl. Stores often accumulate hundreds of stale rules that contradict each other, drag down ranking quality, and nobody remembers why each was added. Best practice: every rule has an owner, an expiry date, and a measurement on whether it’s still helping.