Hybrid Search
A search strategy combining traditional keyword-based exact matching with modern dense vector semantic search to retrieve the most relevant documents.
Think of It Like This
Like searching a library using both the exact title of a book and a general description of what the book is about.
Hybrid search leverages the strengths of sparse retrieval (like BM25) for precise keyword matching and dense retrieval for semantic understanding. The results from both methods are typically merged using a technique like Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF). This approach yields significantly better search relevance than using either method alone.