diff --git a/src/semble/ranking/boosting.py b/src/semble/ranking/boosting.py
index dd88f402..96dcbca1 100644
--- a/src/semble/ranking/boosting.py
+++ b/src/semble/ranking/boosting.py
@@ -78,7 +78,7 @@
 # Fraction of max_score added to each file's top chunk, scaled by its aggregate candidate score.
 _FILE_COHERENCE_BOOST_FRAC = 0.2
 
-_ALPHA_SYMBOL = 0.3  # lean BM25 for exact keyword matching
+_ALPHA_SYMBOL = 0.0  # BM25 only: exact identifier lookups gain nothing from the dense list
 _ALPHA_NL = 0.5  # balanced semantic + BM25
 
 # Common English stopwords excluded from file-stem matching for NL queries.
diff --git a/tests/test_ranking.py b/tests/test_ranking.py
index 8407a355..e3d4400d 100644
--- a/tests/test_ranking.py
+++ b/tests/test_ranking.py
@@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ def test_rerank_topk_demotes_penalised_paths(penalised_path: str) -> None:
     ("query", "alpha_in", "expected"),
     [
         ("MyService", 0.7, 0.7),  # explicit value returned as-is
-        ("MyService", None, 0.3),  # symbol query → _ALPHA_SYMBOL
+        ("MyService", None, 0.0),  # symbol query → _ALPHA_SYMBOL
         ("how does routing work", None, 0.5),  # NL query → _ALPHA_NL
     ],
 )