Concept · Technical basics

Lexical search

Also called: keyword search, lexical, full-text search, exact match search, BM25

Search that matches the exact words in a query. It is fast and predictable but misses results that use different words for the same idea. Similarity search fills that gap.

For example: A lexical search for 'refund' misses an article titled 'Getting your money back'.

Connects to 4

• Similarity search Concept
• Hybrid search Concept
• Vector database Concept
• RAG Concept