{"id":22502,"date":"2024-04-02T23:20:26","date_gmt":"2023-12-08T22:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bloomreach.com\/library\/building-the-best-semantic-search-engine-with-loomi"},"modified":"2024-07-02T18:50:04","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T18:50:04","slug":"best-semantic-search-engine","status":"publish","type":"library","link":"https:\/\/www.bloomreach.com\/en\/blog\/best-semantic-search-engine","title":{"rendered":"Building the Best Semantic Search Engine With Loomi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you heard of semantic search<\/a>? Or semantic understanding<\/a>? If you\u2019re responsible for driving online revenue for your business, chances are you\u2019ve heard these terms before.<\/p>\n

At Bloomreach<\/a>, we define \u201csemantic search\u201d as a search engine<\/a> built with semantic understanding. This is beyond natural language processing (NLP)<\/a>, which is the ability of machines to understand text the way humans can. Semantic understanding is the ability to parse each word of a search query into its respective attribute and also make sense of ambiguous words. For example, for the query “shirt dress,” “shirt” is the style, and “dress” is the product type. Conversely, for the query “dress shirt,” “dress” is the style, and “shirt” is the product type.<\/p>\n

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Now, the reality is that the market is full of noise on this topic. If you\u2019re doing a Google search for \u201csemantic search,\u201d you\u2019re likely looking for a new site search solution<\/a>. But what you\u2019ll find on the results page is a litany of vendors who tell you they have semantic search while trying to sell you their products. How are buyers expected to properly evaluate site search solutions<\/a> without visibility into the search engine itself?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the problem we\u2019re solving for today.<\/p>\n

Bloomreach has been a market leader in product discovery solutions for ecommerce for over a decade. We\u2019re proud to have some of the largest enterprise customers in retail and distribution, with a growing share of mid-market customers to boot. Our customers stick with us year after year because our powerful semantic search engine lets us deliver real value in revenue dollars. But how does it actually work? And what\u2019s really inside the engine? Read along to “go under the hood”<\/a> and learn more about what really powers semantic search at Bloomreach.<\/p>\n

How Semantic Search Works<\/h2>\n

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Let\u2019s start with a quick overview of how semantic search engines work. At its basic level, there are two functions of search: retrieval and ranking.<\/p>\n