Exploring Solr’s OpenNLP Integrations
We’ve focused most of our conversation about machine learning and search on Learning to Rank (LTR), but LTR isn’t the only machine learning tool in the Solr/Elasticsearch toolbox. LTR…
Sub-phrase Highlighting in Solr
We wanted Solr to use its ability to do subphrase matching (pf2, pf3) to procedurally generate richer, contiguous highlighting snippets. Unfortunately, we reached a dead end in our efforts…
Enterprise Data World 2018 Recap
In April I went on a pilgrimage to Enterprise Data World to encourage my colleagues in the Data world who typically are focused on issues of Data Governance, Data…
Why We Created Search Relevance Training
I am a big proponent of Solr and Elasticsearch search engines BUT… … they are frameworks. A bag of tools. I can teach you how they fit together in…
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…
How to Implement a Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain (NDCG) Ranking Quality Scorer in Quepid
Background As a search relevancy engineer at OpenSource Connections (OSC), when I work on a client’s search application, I use Quepid every day! Quepid is a “Test-Driven Relevancy Dashboard”…
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…
Roll your own search analytics
I recently completed a fairly straight-forward search project in which we were replacing a legacysystem with Solr. The goal for the first release was to just make sure that…
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!…