h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What are the percentage score next to the Guide entries, for example, when you search for a specific topic, let us say "Oslo", and a list of
guide entries with the topic Oslo appear. Next to them, on the right
column, there is a percentage score, what are these?

Good question, and I've just added the answer in the FAQ as you're not the first person to ask.

You can now find the answer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A308198#footnote1 but to save you clicking, here's what it says:

For the technically-minded, the mechanism now scores points independently for the subject line and the body text and then combines these scores with a bias towards the score from the subject line. This combined score is further modified by a multiplier depending on the entry's status, so a non-Edited Entry will have to be a much better match than an Edited one to score higher than it. The highest points are gained for an exact match of the search string entered (once 'noise words' are removed). Points are also scored separately for each word or phrase (phrases being words inside double quotes) and inflectional forms of these, with extra points for proximity of the individual phrases.

Hope this helps!

Mark