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….
Test Driving Elasticsearch Learning to Rank with a Linear Model
Last time, I created a simple linear model using three ranking signals. Using TMDB movie data, I came up with a naive model that computed a relevance score from…
What is Learning To Rank?
As an engineer, artificial intelligence (AI) is cool. Spaceships and science fiction cool. There has been a lot of attention around machine learning and artificial intelligence lately. Some of…
We’re Bringing Learning to Rank to Elasticsearch
It’s no secret that machine learning is revolutionizing many industries. This is equally true in search, where companies exhaust themselves capturing nuance through manually tuned search relevance. Mature search…
Our Solution to Solr Multiterm Synonyms: The Match Query Parser
You have probably heard us talk about Solr multiterm synonyms a lot! It’s a big problem that prevents a lot of organizations from getting reasonable search relevance out of…
Why I think search engines are the future of recommendation systems
Recommendation systems have often felt like costly endeavours that require machine learning expertise and large amounts of infrastructure. Search, on the other hand, increasingly feels like a commodity with…
High-Quality Recommendation Systems with Elasticsearch
Did you know technical books can have spoilers? Well ours does 🙂 and so spoiler alert: we close our book, Relevant Search, making an argument that search engine technology…
Your Recommendation Systems Aren’t As Cool As My Friends
What is more important in a recommendation? That the recommendation is accurate based on my tastes OR That the person making the recommendation is someone I like and respect…
Interpreting Google Analytics for Site Search
This article provides some guidance on understanding user behavior using what’s provided in Google Analytics. Specifically, it examines the statistics provided under the “search terms” page, found under “Behavior”…
Search Precision and Recall By Example
The following is an excerpt from our upcoming book Relevant Search from a chapter written by OSC alum John Berryman. Use discount code turnbullmu to get 38% off! Precision…
Getting Lost in The Amazon: How North Face Site Search secured my sale
Bad site search can halt an e-commerce sale in its tracks. To show that, I wanted to share what happened with a recent purchase of mine. In this tale…