Today we know that web search is Google, that’s not enterprise search.
Over and above the casual user’s browsing of the web using the obviously world-renowned Google search engine (other search engines are also available), enterprise search is the more defined and managed process of providing search functionality inside an enterprise’s data repositories, e-retail store and other customer- and partner-facing information resources.
Typically still executed over the web or through connected mobile applications, enterprise search is most effectively delivered via an API-first ‘plug in’ process due to its platform-level complexity i.e. building in-house services that attempt to ape this process is technically possible, but usually clunky, cumbersome and lacking in functionality.
One company that knows this space well is Algolia.
As a leading API-first search & discovery platform, Algolia this month announced the acquisition of Search.io, whose flagship product is Neuralsearch – a vector search engine that uses hashing technology on top of vectors to provide what is said to be ‘unprecedented’ price performance at scale.
Algolia will now combine its keyword search and Search.io’s Neuralsearch into a single API.
Instant gratification
The digital world is evolving rapidly, and so is the manner in which people search and gather information. Dramatic progress in the world of technology, shifting consumer preferences, and the need for instant gratification and value are fast disrupting the search and discovery market.
However, a few key tenets remain the same: the desire to make search and discovery intuitive, extremely fast, and massively scalable, while remaining affordable and easy to implement.
With this acquisition, Algolia insists it becomes the only API-first search and discovery platform with a hybrid search engine, which comprises both keyword and semantic search in a single API. The total solution is fast, scalable and cost effective.
“Our mission, vision and purpose is powering discovery. We’ve done this to date largely with keyword search. With the addition of the vector search engine from Search.io, we’re going to disrupt the search market significantly,” said Bernadette Nixon, chief executive officer, Algolia. “We’ll be the only product on the market that combines keyword search with vector-based semantic and image search, along with vector-based recommendations. Vendor consolidation is back in vogue, and being able to get best in class capabilities from one provider is powerful in today’s economic climate.”
The combination of two search pioneers – Algolia (with its keyword search) and Search.io (with its vector-based semantic search) – enables Algolia to more surface the most accurate and relevant results for users, whether they use specific keywords or natural human expressions.
Many companies claim to offer some form of semantic search, however, these companies do not offer the capabilities of keyword search and vector-based semantic search in a single API cost-effectively, nor do they have the ability to scale. In essence, Algolia provides users with the ability to search as they think.
“Industry-wide, retailers are leaving money on the table because it’s challenging to capture revenue from long tail search queries (such as ‘stunning fall outfit for mother of the bride’), which could potentially represent up to 55% of all search queries today,” noted Nixon. “These low volume searches could collectively amount to millions of queries corresponding to millions of dollars in unfulfilled sales of less popular or searched for products. Our new Algolia hybrid search engine solves this long tail problem – truly putting search on autopilot at a price point that is 90% less than other vector-based search options.”
By dint of hiring stint
Algolia’s acquisition of Search.io comes on the heels of a significant 2022 hiring stint, with the company creating more than 145 new jobs in Q2 alone and doubling its employee population over the past year.
“We are delighted to be joining a world-class leader in search and discovery,” said Hamish Ogilvy, chief executive officer and co-founder, Search.io. “Delivering on the promise of AI search has traditionally required tremendous internal expertise and engineering resources to work effectively.”
Algolia combines both keyword search and vector-based semantic search in a single API. Organizations need to implement the Algolia hybrid engine once to derive the benefits of both technologies. Compared with knowledge graph-based strategies that require manual interventions, this vector-based approach ensures automated updates as new data comes in and new relationships that need to be established
The technology position here comes down to highly redundant, globally distributed instant search using more than 100 datacenters worldwide. Now, this global search distribution network combined with vector-based semantic search using extremely fast and efficient neural hash technology is likely to be an appealing solution for many.
About Adrian Bridgwater
Adrian Bridgwater is a freelance journalist and corporate content creation specialist focusing on cross platform software application development as well as all related aspects software engineering, project management and technology as a whole. Adrian is a regular writer and blogger with Computer Weekly and others covering the application development landscape to detail the movers, shakers and start-ups that make the industry the vibrant place that it is. His journalistic creed is to bring forward-thinking, impartial, technology editorial to a professional (and hobbyist) software audience around the world. His mission is to objectively inform, educate and challenge - and through this champion better coding capabilities and ultimately better software engineering.