Reflective Search Relevance Testing
Many organizations find relevance testing frustrating. Often we start consulting engagements and the first problem we have to solve is “how do we test search relevance?” In this article…
Solr Multiterm Synonyms: avoiding sow=false surprises
Many Solr teams have gotten stumped on the sow=false behavior introduced in Solr 7. To review, sow=false (split-on-whitespace=false) changes how the query is parsed. With sow=false the query is…
Haystack Agenda Announced!
Hey, you know you want to come to this awesome search relevance conference! We’ll have talks from companies like LexisNexis, Wikimedia Foundation, Snagajob, Lucidworks, and Elastic! Talks range from…
Elasticsearch Learning to Rank 1.0.1 Released
Thanks so much to community members who let us know that Elasticsearch Learning to Rank did not work with Elastic Cloud/XPack Security. Today Elastic Learning to Rank 1.0.1 is…
Retaining Customers
In product meetings, when I advocate for customer retention – regular, repeat business from the customer over months/years – I sometimes get blank stares. Teams want to do everything…
Why We’re Doing a Search Relevance Conference
Our mission is to empower the world’s best search teams. Search teams ultimately generate value for their organizations through better, smarter search. That is: relevance. Sadly relevance remains maddening!…
Solr Synonyms and Taxonomies: Mea Culpa
I screwed up! Mea Culpa. Let he who is without synonyms throw the first rock! In my talk Taxonomical Semantical Magical Search, I presented an index-time hypernym/hyponym expansion solution….
Elasticsearch Learning to Rank 1.0 RC1 Released
We reached a major milestone over the weekend! We released the first release candidate for version 1.0 of Elasticsearch Learning to Rank. While our partners Wikimedia and Snagajob are…
Solving The Search Management Minefield in Open Source Search
A common theme in software development is the tension between: Fixing painful bugs now!! Creating tools & practices that let us fix bugs faster (though at some theoretical time…
How is search different than other machine learning problems?
Learning to Rank turns search into a machine learning problem. In this article, I want to explore what makes search distinct from other machine learning problems. How does one…
Optimizing User-Product Matching Marketplaces
The key to really understanding search, recommendations, and other ‘product matching’ systems is microeconomics. Say what!?!? No hear me out. In this article, I want to challenge you to…
Using Splainer to Debug Complex Solr Function Queries
In complex Solr relevance work, I find I create a fair amount of function queries to boost & balance results. Solr function queries look like Excel queries from hell….