Merge Multiple Versions of a Doc into One Result

Merge Results allows you to prevent multiple copies of a document from cluttering the search results page by presenting the different versions of an article as one result.

How It Works

Merge Results works for searches with results. Instance users select two properties of an object:

Primary Field. All the results that share a common primary field value are selected for grouping. For instance, if Primary Field is Title, then all the results with the same title can be grouped. In case the Primary Field is AuthorName, then all the authors with the same name can be grouped.
Versioning Field. The grouped documents must have a property value which differentiates them. The property value can be the article ID or published date. The unique property value is stored used in the dropdown. In the next image, the article ID used to differentiate the grouped results.

Impact on Search

When in use, it impacts user experience. The two main limitations are:

Result count, merge count, and pagination can be off the mark because many merged results are counted separately.
No merging occurs when a facet is applied.

NOTE.

Customize Search Client View and Merge Results are incompatible with each other. You can use either Customize Search Client View or Merge Results, but not the both features simultaneously.

Merge Results

Go to Search Clients and open a search client for editing.
In the Content Sources tab, expand a content source, select a content type, and select Merge Results.
Enable Merge Results.
Select a property from the Primary Field and a property from the Versioning Field and save the settings. The settings in the image ensure that any articles with the same title but different URLs are merged into one result.
Click Yes to crawl the content source again. The merged results will be visible after the reindexing.
Click Save.