Search application developers put a lot of effort into optimizing the ranking of search results, especially in areas like ecommerce, where incremental ranking improvements translate directly to revenue. …

There’s a lot of writing about search — especially about ranking and relevance. And recently there’s been an increased focus on the particular challenges of query understanding. But, surprisingly, there hasn’t been much discussion of content understanding. This post will be the first of many to address this gap. Content understanding is the foundation of the search process. Let’s…

This publication is a series of posts devoted to query understanding. Each post is self-contained, but there is a natural progression. If you’d like to read them all, start with the first one.

One of the oldest distinctions in information access is between searching and browsing. Does a user initiate an information-seeking journey by typing keywords into a search box, or by browsing a category hierarchy? Search vs. browse is a false dichotomy. Search vs. browse is a false dichotomy, since users employ both strategies to achieve highly overlapping goals…

Machine learning (or AI if you prefer) is amazing. I cannot think of another area of computer science — or of technology in general — that has been more influential in the past decade. Fundamentally, machine learning means learning from data. Specifically, machine learning means learning generalizable patterns from data…

One of the formative experiences in my mathematics education was a time I struggled to compute an integral in a calculus class. After sweating over it and scribbling for several minutes, I showed the instructor what I believed to be the correct answer. She said, “that’s a negative number.” Nonplussed…

I hope that everyone has been enjoying the summer. I took a sabbatical from teaching, but I’m looking forward to new students this fall. Are you excited to learn more about search? If so, you’re in luck! Hopefully one of these three upcoming UpLimit classes suits your needs and schedule…

As a search specialist, my main goal is to improve searcher happiness. Sure, companies pay me to improve business metrics like conversion rate and revenue, but I mostly accomplish this by helping searchers find what they are looking for, and, in the case of ecommerce, buy it. But what is…

We have reached the stage of generative AI where artists, authors, and performers are convinced that AI is stealing their lives — and, perhaps more importantly, their livelihoods. This dystopian theme is showing up in lawsuits, strikes, and, of course, Black Mirror episodes. Yet, as far as I can tell…