To close the loop on the searching experience, you can make observations to inform the system that you have observed a document and are more confident that what you are looking for isn’t there.
Making an observation lowers the probability for any document you mark as observed.
p-search-observe) ¶Make an observation on the document under the point, lowering its probability. The amount by which it is stored in the variable p-search-default-observation-level.
Calling this with a prefix argument C-u will prompt you for a probability to multiply the current score by.
Ideally, an observation should lower the probability of a document by how sure you are your observation wasn’t flawed. For example, if you spent a few minutes going over a simple few line file and are absolutely sure that what you’re looking for isn’t there, then you’d want to multiply the file’s probability by something very low, like 0.00001. On the other hand, if you just glanced over a large document and suppose that what you’re looking for isn’t there, then a higher value to multiply by would be better.
After making observations, files that you’ve seen before will re-appear, especially if your priors gave it a high probability.