Elasticsearch, sorting by exact string match

One solution is to manipulate the score of the results that contain the Bob in the first name field.

For example:

POST /test/users{  "name": "Bob"}POST /test/users{  "name": "Alice"}GET /test/users/_search{  "query": {    "bool": {      "should": [        {          "match": {            "name": {              "query": "Bob",               "boost" : 2            }          }        },         {          "match_all": {}        }      ]    }  }}

Would return both Bob and Alice in that order (with approximate scores of 1 and 0.2 respectively).

From the book:

Query-time boosting is the main tool that you can use to tune relevance. Any type of query accepts a boost parameter. Setting a boost of 2 doesn’t simply double the final _score; the actual boost value that is applied goes through normalization and some internal optimization. However, it does imply that a clause with a boost of 2 is twice as important as a clause with a boost of 1.

Meaning that if you also wanted "Fred" to come ahead of Bob you could just boost it with a 3 factor in the example above.