NUMERIC VALUE DECAY FOR EFFICIENT RELEVANCE COMPUTATION

Search engines today are capable of incorporating numeric scoring modifiers from controlling applications into their relevance computations. Challenges arise in keeping these modifiers current, given that they may change over time. Embodiments provide a new way to compute numeric value decay for efficient relevance computation without having to rely on a controlling application. The controlling application can set a value for a modifier of an object managed by the controlling application and the controlling application can perform operations on the modifier. However, the controlling application does not need to keep track of the modifier and compute the modifier value independently. Rather, a search engine is configured to perform decay computation(s) and adjust the modifier value on a regular basis or on demand. The search engine ensures that modifier values for all the objects indexed by the search engine are always valid—within acceptable ranges and with acceptable adjustments.