proximity could get more weight

[fgnievinski]

the nearest feature should appear first among similarly named features or at least before dissimilarly named features.

What did you search for?

"rio grande" when browsing nearby
https://openstreetmap.org/#map=11/-30.04354/-51.20994
https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=rio+grande&viewbox=-51.47095%2C-29.95196%2C-50.82550%2C-30.13028&format=jsonv2&debug=1

What result did you get?

a long list of similar and dissimilar named features:

What result did you expect?

this is desired result:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/242762
it appeared in 7th place in search results.

Further details

even enclosing the search expression in quotes didn't prevent randomly named features from appearing before the intended one in the search results, e.g.:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/33859167

[mtmail]

I'm adding screenshots. Green box = viewbox parameters. The desired result is about 300km outside the viewbox. I think Nominatim only uses 2x the viewbox for reranking results

[lonvia]

@mtmail is right, viewbox does not do a nearest search. It only slightly favours results in or near the viewbox.

That said, the 'Agno' and 'Bille' definitely should not show up in the results. This needs fixing.