Our product provides a search functionality. Search results are ordered by rank.
We also provide the possibility to rate the different search results: a user can (optionally) give each result a rating from 1 to 5 stars.
These ratings have no influence on the ranking of the search results. This was the recommendation of one expert we asked and it seemed very plausible to me, because rating and ranking are two different things.
E.g. sometimes I need a report or document which I don't like (and which I gave a bad rating) but which I have to use anyway.
That's the theory so far, now in practice user feedback shows, that people are expecting that their ratings have in influence on the search result order. Several users have asked why their top rated results are not put higher on the search results list.
Now the recommendation seemed quite good, but I don't want to fight against the users expectations either.
So my questions are:
- Is it a good practice to strictly distinguish between rating and ranking?
- Is there a way to fulfill this requirement and at the same time meet the users expectations?