Evolution of search experience

We are now going to see how users’ demand for a better search experience requires us to consider other techniques than just keyword-based search. In this section, we will approach the limitations of keyword-based search, understand what vector representation entails, and how the meta representation HNSW emerged to facilitate information retrieval with vector.

The limits of keyword-based search

For those of you who are comparatively new to the subject matter, before we talk about vector representation, we need to understand why the industry and keyword-based search experience have reached their limits, failing to fully meet end-user requirements.

Keyword-based search relies on exact matches between the user query and the terms contained in documents, which could lead to missed relevant results if the search system is not refined enough with synonyms, abbreviations, alternative phrasings, and so on. Therefore, it is important for the search...