If you want to rank results so that certain items appear first in the list, you currently need to either load the entire list (which is too heavy) or scroll until reaching the item in the list.
This means that if a result is ranked, for example, 26th, it will not appear first even if it is marked as a priority item.
My suggestion is to enable preloading of items that are marked as preferred, so they can appear first without needing to load the entire list in advance or requiring the user to scroll.