ElasticSearch, return results, dedupped and with custom sort bubbling to top

Try this approach:

• your mapping should, also, store a not_analyzed version of your title, so that the buckets will be built based on the full title, not on individual terms forming the title:

{  "mappings": {    "engineers": {      "properties": {        "title": {          "type": "string",          "fields":{            "raw": {              "type": "string",              "index": "not_analyzed"            }          }        },        "content": {          "type": "string"        },        "weighted_importance": {          "type": "integer"        }      }    }  }}

• group the results on buckets built on title.raw defined above
• define a top_hits sub-aggregation to bring back the "best" document for each bucket
• define another sub-aggregation on the same level as the top_hits one that should be a max aggregation that will compute the maximum weighted_importance
• in the main aggregation use the max above to sort the resulting buckets

GET /my_index/engineers/_search?search_type=count{  "query": {    "match": {      "title": "Engineer"    }  },  "aggs": {    "title": {      "terms": {        "field": "title.raw",        "order": {"best_hit":"desc"}      },      "aggs": {        "first_match": {          "top_hits": {            "sort": [{"weighted_importance": {"order": "desc"}}],            "size": 1          }        },        "best_hit": {          "max": {            "lang": "groovy",             "script": "doc['weighted_importance'].value"          }        }      }    }  }}