One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for ranking search-results. During operation, the system receives a query, wherein the query includes one or more terms. The system subsequently searches a dataset using the one or more terms to obtain search-results. Next, the system receives an attribute-identifier, which identifies an attribute for the obtained search-results. Then, for each search-result, the system calculates a combined score based on an attribute-value for the identified attribute, and a relevance-score for the search-result. The system then ranks the search-results based on combined scores associated with the search-results. Finally, the system presents the ranked search-results to a user.