Chapter 1. The search relevance problem

This chapter covers

  • The ubiquity of search (search is all around us!)
  • The challenge of building a relevant search experience
  • Examples of this challenge for prominent search domains
  • The inability of out-of-the-box solutions to solve the problem
  • This book’s approach for building relevant search

Getting a search engine to behave can be maddening. Whether you’re just getting started with Solr or Elasticsearch, or you have years of experience, you’ve likely struggled with low-quality search results. Out-of-the-box settings haven’t met your needs, and you’ve fought to deliver even marginally relevant search results.

When it comes to relevance ranking, a search engine can seem like a mystical black box. ...

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