What is Hybrid Search? - Definition & Meaning
Learn what hybrid search is, how keyword and semantic search are combined, and why it often delivers the best results for RAG and enterprise search.
Definition
Hybrid search combines keyword-based search (like BM25) with semantic/vector search. Both methods return results that are fused (e.g., via Reciprocal Rank Fusion or weighted combination) for better recall and precision.
Technical explanation
Keyword search (BM25) excels at exact terms, acronyms, and IDs. Vector search excels at meaning and synonyms. Hybrid runs both and combines scores. Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF) is a popular fusion method. Elasticsearch, Pinecone, Weaviate, and pgvector support hybrid. Trade-off: more compute and complexity, but often significantly better results.
How AVARC Solutions applies this
AVARC Solutions implements hybrid search for RAG and enterprise search where both exact matches and semantic relevance matter. We use RRF or weighted combination depending on the use case.
Practical examples
- A legal search engine finding "Article 7 GDPR" exactly via BM25 and related explanations via vector search.
- A product catalog searching product names (keyword) and descriptions (semantic) together.
- A RAG system using hybrid search before reranking for maximum retrieval quality.
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