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I can’t share those details, but I can say that geography certainly impact latency when you’re…
From The Noisy Channel

I can’t share those details, but I can say that geography certainly impact latency when you’re…

I can’t share those details, but I can say that geography certainly impact latency when you’re serving from the cloud, especially when you are doing query processing...

Search: Should You Build, Buy, or Borrow?
From The Noisy Channel

Search: Should You Build, Buy, or Borrow?

Search: Should You Build, Buy, Or Borrow?A challenge that many companies face is deciding whether to build, buy, or borrow their core search technology. As with...

Thanks Shawn!
From The Noisy Channel

Thanks Shawn!

Thanks Shawn! I think that Amazon was the first place that I saw this flow, and it certainly inspired my team’s work at LinkedIn. Amazon’s price sort can still...

I agree that the search engine can only do so much to make up for poorly structured data.
From The Noisy Channel

I agree that the search engine can only do so much to make up for poorly structured data.

I agree that the search engine can only do so much to make up for poorly structured data. If you look at one my “shopping is hard” post, you’ll see that my top...

Why is it so hard to sort by price?
From The Noisy Channel

Why is it so hard to sort by price?

A common use case for online shopping is searching for products — say, coffee makers — and then sorting the results by price, from low to high, in order to find...

Analyze This!
From The Noisy Channel

Analyze This!

Product development work should be data-driven — or, to be more precise, data-informed. We live in an age of science, which means that we should use data to resolve...

Shopping is Hard, Let’s go Searching!
From The Noisy Channel

Shopping is Hard, Let’s go Searching!

In 1992, Mattel released the infamous Teen Talk Barbie, most known — and rightfully mocked — for saying “Math is hard, let’s go shopping!” Actually, that’s a paraphrase...

I’d hope that a job description would align with these kinds of questions.
From The Noisy Channel

I’d hope that a job description would align with these kinds of questions.

I’d hope that a job description would align with these kinds of questions. It’s one of the reasons to publish questions — the interviewing process shouldn’t be...

Interview Questions for Search Relevance Engineers and Product Managers
From The Noisy Channel

Interview Questions for Search Relevance Engineers and Product Managers

Technical interviewing is hard, and it’s a subject I’m very passionate about personally.But this post isn’t about technical interviewing in general. It’s specifically...

A/B Testing for Search is Different
From The Noisy Channel

A/B Testing for Search is Different

A/B testing is a critical tool for improving search products. While A/B testing has limitations and shouldn’t be the only analytical method you use, it’s the single...

You’re welcome, Dima!
From The Noisy Channel

You’re welcome, Dima!

You’re welcome, Dima!The best technique I know for encouraging users to enter natural language searches is to promote them through autocomplete. For example, on...

Query Understanding and Chatbots
From The Noisy Channel

Query Understanding and Chatbots

In this series, I’ve focused on the context of traditional search applications, which are the main beneficiaries of better query understanding. But given the rapid...

Query Understanding and Voice Interfaces
From The Noisy Channel

Query Understanding and Voice Interfaces

On the surface, using a voice interface for search doesn’t seem that different from typing text into a search box.Converting speech to text and vice versa is aAmazon...

Indeed, there are lots of challenges with faceted search in practice.
From The Noisy Channel

Indeed, there are lots of challenges with faceted search in practice.

Indeed, there are lots of challenges with faceted search in practice.With regard to the three problems you raise:1) I agree that faceted search has a way of unlocking...

Question Answering
From The Noisy Channel

Question Answering

When we talk about search, we have traditionally thought in terms of search results being documents or products. Searchers, however, increasingly think of search...

Search Results Clustering
From The Noisy Channel

Search Results Clustering

Search queries that express broad intent often return intractably large result sets. We’ve already discussed faceted search as a way to help users narrow theirScatter...

Search Result Snippets
From The Noisy Channel

Search Result Snippets

Search result snippets, also known as query-biased summaries, are the additional context included with each result on the search results page. They are an essential...

Search Results Presentation
From The Noisy Channel

Search Results Presentation

Until now, we’ve mostly focused on query processing — which is to be expected, given that this series is about query understanding. But given that searchers are...

Great post, and thanks for the shout-out! Excited to read the rest of the series.
From The Noisy Channel

Great post, and thanks for the shout-out! Excited to read the rest of the series.

Great post, and thanks for the shout-out! Excited to read the rest of the series.

Faceted Search
From The Noisy Channel

Faceted Search

Faceted search is a topic broad enough to deserve its own book. It has become a standard feature of all modern search engines, including open-source platforms like...
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