Given at self.conference 2019 in Detroit, MI by Toria Gibbs.

1. Search Engines
How They Work and
Why You Need Them

4. Agenda
1. Why build search engines?
2. Search indexes
3. Open source tools
4. Interesting challenges

5. Agenda
1. Why build search engines?
2. Search indexes
3. Open source tools
4. Interesting challenges

6. Agenda
1. Why build search engines?
2. Search indexes
3. Open source tools
4. Interesting challenges

7. What do you
even do all day?
We have Google.
@scarletdrive

8. Not all search engines are
web search engines.
@scarletdrive

9. google.com potatoparcel.com
Large scope
(entire internet)
Small scope
(just a few potatoes)
No control
over content
Total control over content
Many use cases
Optimize for selling
potatoes

12. Most websites have a
custom search engine.
@scarletdrive

13. Why build search engines?
● Keep it local and customize it

15. Let’s try to
search my store.
@scarletdrive

16. id title price
1 red cat mittens 14.99
2 blue dog mittens 24.99
3 blue hat for cats 8.00
4 vacation hat for dog 12.99
5 cat hat 5.00
6 red and blue dog hat 10.49
7 kitten mittens 11.99
8 dog booties 11.99

17. id title price
1 red cat mittens 14.99
2 blue dog mittens 24.99
3 blue hat for cats 8.00
4 vacation hat for dog 12.99
5 cat hat 5.00
6 red and blue dog hat 10.49
7 kitten mittens 11.99
8 dog booties 11.99
cat
SELECT *
FROM items
WHERE title LIKE ‘%cat%’

18. id title price
1 red cat mittens 14.99
2 blue dog mittens 24.99
3 blue hat for cats 8.00
4 vacation hat for dog 12.99
5 cat hat 5.00
6 red and blue dog hat 10.49
7 kitten mittens 11.99
8 dog booties 11.99
cat
SELECT *
FROM items
WHERE title LIKE ‘%cat%’

19. n = items in database
m = max length of title strings
n·m

20. n = items in database
m = max length of title strings = 250
O(n)

21. n n · m (m=250)
10 2 500
100 25 000
1 000 250 000
10 000 2 500 000
100 000 25 000 000
1 000 000 250 000 000

22. Why build search engines?
● Keep it local and customize it
● Improve performance

23. id title price
1 red cat mittens 14.99
2 blue dog mittens 24.99
3 blue hat for cats 8.00
4 vacation hat for dog 12.99
5 cat hat 5.00
6 red and blue dog hat 10.49
7 kitten mittens 11.99
8 dog booties 11.99
SELECT *
FROM items
WHERE title LIKE ‘%cat%’

24. id title price
1 red cat mittens 14.99
2 blue dog mittens 24.99
3 blue hat for cats 8.00
4 vacation hat for dog 12.99
5 cat hat 5.00
6 red and blue dog hat 10.49
7 kitten mittens 11.99
8 dog booties 11.99
● Search for “cat” incorrectly
returns “vacation hat for dog”
SELECT *
FROM items
WHERE title LIKE ‘%cat%’

25. id title price
1 red cat mittens 14.99
2 blue dog mittens 24.99
3 blue hat for cats 8.00
4 vacation hat for dog 12.99
5 cat hat 5.00
6 red and blue dog hat 10.49
7 kitten mittens 11.99
8 dog booties 11.99
● Search for “cat” incorrectly
returns “vacation hat for dog”
● Search for “cat” doesn’t return
“kitten mittens”
SELECT *
FROM items
WHERE title LIKE ‘%cat%’

26. id title price
1 red cat mittens 14.99
2 blue dog mittens 24.99
3 blue hat for cats 8.00
4 vacation hat for dog 12.99
5 cat hat 5.00
6 red and blue dog hat 10.49
7 kitten mittens 11.99
8 dog booties 11.99
● Search for “cat” incorrectly
returns “vacation hat for dog”
● Search for “cat” doesn’t return
“kitten mittens”
● Search for “cats” doesn’t return
“cat hat” or “red cat mittens”
SELECT *
FROM items
WHERE title LIKE ‘%cats%’

27. SELECT * FROM items
WHERE title LIKE ‘cat’ OR title LIKE ‘cats’
OR title LIKE ‘cat %’ OR title LIKE ‘cats %’
OR title LIKE ‘% cat’ OR title LIKE ‘% cats’
OR title LIKE ‘% cat %’ OR title LIKE ‘% cats %’
OR title LIKE ‘% cat.%’ OR title LIKE ‘% cats.%’
OR title LIKE ‘%.cat %’ OR title LIKE ‘%.cats %’
OR title LIKE ‘%.cat.%’ OR title LIKE ‘%.cats.%’
OR title LIKE ‘% cat,%’ OR title LIKE ‘% cats,%’
OR title LIKE ‘%,cat %’ OR title LIKE ‘%,cats %’
OR title LIKE ‘%,cat,%’ OR title LIKE ‘%,cats,%’
OR title LIKE ‘% cat-%’ OR title LIKE ‘% cats-%’
OR title LIKE ‘%-cat %’ OR title LIKE ‘%-cats %’
OR title LIKE ‘%-cat-%’ OR title LIKE ‘%-cats-%’
...

28. Why build search engines?
● Keep it local and customize it
● Improve performance
● Improve quality of results

29. But how?
@scarletdrive

30. Agenda
1. Why build search engines? ✓
2. Search indexes
3. Open source tools
4. Interesting challenges

31. red [1, 6]
cat [1, 3, 5]
mitten [2, 7]
blue [2, 3, 6]
hat [3, 4, 5, 6]
dog [2, 4, 6, 8]
vacation [4]
kitten [7]
boot [8]
id title price
1 red cat mittens 14.99
2 blue dog mittens 24.99
3 blue hat for cats 8.00
4 vacation hat for dog 12.99
5 cat hat 5.00
6 red and blue dog hat 10.49
7 kitten mittens 11.99
8 dog booties 11.99

32. red [1, 6]
cat [1, 3, 5]
mitten [2, 7]
blue [2, 3, 6]
hat [3, 4, 5, 6]
dog [2, 4, 6, 8]
vacation [4]
kitten [7]
boot [8]
Inverted
Index

33. Terminology
● A document is a single searchable unit
red [1, 6]
cat [1, 3, 5]
mitten [2, 7]
blue [2, 3, 6]
hat [3, 4, 5, 6]
dog [2, 4, 6, 8]
vacation [4]
kitten [7]
boot [8]
7 kitten mittens 11.99

34. Terminology
● A document is a single searchable unit
● A field is a defined value in a document
red [1, 6]
cat [1, 3, 5]
mitten [2, 7]
blue [2, 3, 6]
hat [3, 4, 5, 6]
dog [2, 4, 6, 8]
vacation [4]
kitten [7]
boot [8]
id title price
7 kitten mittens 11.99

35. Terminology
● A document is a single searchable unit
● A field is a defined value in a document
● A term is a value extracted from the
source in order to build the index
red [1, 6]
cat [1, 3, 5]
mitten [2, 7]
blue [2, 3, 6]
hat [3, 4, 5, 6]
dog [2, 4, 6, 8]
vacation [4]
kitten [7]
boot [8]
id title price
7 kitten mittens 11.99

36. Terminology
● A document is a single searchable unit
● A field is a defined value in a document
● A term is a value extracted from the
source in order to build the index
● An inverted index is an internal data
structure which maps terms to IDs
red [1, 6]
cat [1, 3, 5]
mitten [2, 7]
blue [2, 3, 6]
hat [3, 4, 5, 6]
dog [2, 4, 6, 8]
vacation [4]
kitten [7]
boot [8]

37. Terminology
● A document is a single searchable unit
● A field is a defined value in a document
● A term is a value extracted from the
source in order to build the index
● An inverted index is an internal data
structure which maps terms to IDs
● An index is a collection of documents
(including many inverted indexes)
red [1, 6]
cat [1, 3, 5]
mitten [2, 7]
blue [2, 3, 6]
... ...
5.00 [5]
8.00 [3]
0-10.00 [3, 5]
11.99 [7, 8]
... ...
id title price
1 red cat mittens 14.99
2 blue dog mittens 24.99
... ... ...

38. items indexTerminology
● A search index can have
many inverted indexes
● A search engine can have
many search indexes
title inverted index
price inverted index
blog-posts index
title inverted index
post inverted index

39. Did we solve it?
● Keep it local ✓ and customize it
● Improve performance
● Improve quality of results

40. red [1, 6]
cat [1, 3, 5]
mitten [2, 7]
blue [2, 3, 6]
hat [3, 4, 5, 6]
dog [2, 4, 6, 8]
vacation [4]
kitten [7]
boot [8]
cat

41. O(1)

42. red [1, 6]
cat [1, 3, 5]
mitten [2, 7]
blue [2, 3, 6]
hat [3, 4, 5, 6]
dog [2, 4, 6, 8]
vacation [4]
kitten [7]
boot [8]
cat
id title price
1 red cat mittens 14.99
3 blue hat for cats 8.00
5 cat hat 5.00

43. r = number of results found
O(1+r)

44. ...but we usually only ask for a fixed
number of results at a time
O(25) → O(1)

45. Did we solve it?
● Keep it local ✓ and customize it
● Improve performance ✓
● Improve quality of results

46. But at
what cost?
@scarletdrive

47. Trade-offs
● Space
● System complexity
● Pre-processing time

48. O(1)
Query
time
O(n·m·p)
Index
time

49. Did we solve it?
● Keep it local ✓ and customize it
● Improve performance ✓
○ At the expense of space, complexity, and pre-processing effort
● Improve quality of results

50. Let’s talk about
how we build it.
@scarletdrive

51. red [1, 6]
cat [1, 3, 5]
mitten [2, 7]
blue [2, 3, 6]
hat [3, 4, 5, 6]
dog [2, 4, 6, 8]
vacation [4]
kitten [7]
boot [8]
id title price
1 red cat mittens 14.99
2 blue dog mittens 24.99
3 blue hat for cats 8.00
4 vacation hat for dog 12.99
5 cat hat 5.00
6 red and blue dog hat 10.49
7 kitten mittens 11.99
8 dog booties 11.99
How did we do this??

52. Step 1:
Tokenization
string: “cat hat”
array: [“cat”, “hat”]
Image from aliexpress.com

53. Image from aliexpress.com
Step 2:
Normalization
● Stemming
○ “cats” → “cat”
○ “walking” → “walk”
● Stop words
○ Remove “the”, “and”, “to”, etc...

54. Image from aliexpress.com
Step 3: Filters
● Lowercase
○ “Dog” → “dog”
● Synonyms
○ “colour” → “color”
○ “t-shirt” → “tshirt”
○ “canadian” → “canada”
○ “kitten” → “cat”

55. Quality Problems
1. “cat” search returned “vacation hat for dog”

56. Quality Problems
1. “cat” search returned “vacation hat for dog”
id title price
4 vacation hat for dog 12.99
cat [1, 3, 5]
hat [4]
dog [4]
vacation [4]

57. Quality Problems
1. “cat” search returned “vacation hat for dog”
cat [1, 3, 5]
hat [4]
dog [4]
vacation [4]
cat
id title price
4 vacation hat for dog 12.99

58. Quality Problems
1. “cat” search returned “vacation hat for dog”
2. “cats” search does not return “red cat mittens”

59. Quality Problems
2. “cats” search does not return “red cat mittens”
id title price
1 red cat mittens 14.99
red [1]
cat [1]
mitten [1]
→

60. All transformations performed on
the input data for the index
are also performed on the query

61. Quality Problems
2. “cats” search does not return “red cat mittens”
id title price
1 red cat mittens 14.99
red [1]
cat [1]
mitten [1]
cats cat

62. Quality Problems
1. “cat” search returned “vacation hat for dogs”
2. “cats” search does not return “red cat mittens”
3. “cat” search does not return “kitten mittens”

63. Quality Problems
3. “cat” search does not return “kitten mittens”
id title price
7 kitten mittens 11.99
cat [7]
mitten [7]

64. Quality Problems
3. “cat” search does not return “kitten mittens”
cat [7]
mitten [7]
id title price
7 kitten mittens 11.99
cat

65. Quality Problems
3 ½ search for “kitten” still returns “kitten mittens”
cat [7]
mitten [7]
id title price
7 kitten mittens 11.99
kitten cat

66. Did we solve it?
● Keep it local ✓ and customize it ✓
● Improve performance ✓
○ At the expense of space, complexity, and pre-processing effort
● Improve quality of results ✓
○ By performing special pre-processing steps

67. Agenda
1. Why build search engines? ✓
2. Search indexes ✓
3. Open source tools
4. Interesting challenges

68. I want a search engine...
do I have to build it myself?
@scarletdrive

70. ● Inverted index
● Basic tokenization,
normalization, and filters
● Replication, sharding, and
distribution
● Caching and warming
● Advanced tokenization,
normalization, and filters
● Plugins
● ...and more!

71. Which one should I pick?
It doesn’t matter

72. Which one should I pick?
● Most projects work well with either
● Getting configuration right is most important
● Test with your own data, your own queries
Side by Side with Elasticsearch and Solr by Rafał Kuć and Radu Gheorghe
https://berlinbuzzwords.de/14/session/side-side-elasticsearch-and-solr
https://berlinbuzzwords.de/15/session/side-side-elasticsearch-solr-part-2-performance-scalability
Solr vs. Elasticsearch by Kelvin Tan
http://solr-vs-elasticsearch.com/

73. Which one should I pick?
Better for advanced
customization
Easier to learn, faster to
start up, better docs
~ ~ WARNING: Toria’s personal opinion ~ ~

74. Agenda
1. Why build search engines? ✓
2. Search indexes ✓
3. Open source tools ✓
4. Interesting challenges

75. Interesting Challenge:
Scalability

76. Too much traffic?
Replication

77. Too much traffic?
Replication
update

78. Too much data?
Sharding
Distribution

79. Replication, Sharding, and Distribution
8 shards
(A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H)
3 replicas each
6 servers

80. Replication, Sharding, and Distribution
8 shards
(A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H)
3 replicas each
6 servers

81. Interesting Challenge:
Relevance

82. id title price
1 red cat mittens 14.99
3 blue hat for cats 8.00
5 cat hat 5.00
22 feather cat toy 7.99
124 cat and mouse t-shirt 24.50
128 cat t-shirt 31.80
329 “cats rule” sticker 0.99
420 catnip joint for cats 5.99
455 cat toy 7.00
... ... ...
When there are
many results, what
order should we
display them in?

83. tf-idf

84. TF(term) = # times this term appears in doc / total # terms in doc
IDF(term) = loge
(total number of docs / # docs which contain this term)
Relevance with tf-idf
1. The orange cat is a very good cat.
2. My cat ate an orange.
3. Cats are the best and I will give
every cat a special cat toy.
1. TF(cat) = 2/8 = 0.25
2. TF(cat) = 1/5 = 0.20
3. TF(cat) = 3/14 = 0.21
IDF(cat) = loge
(3/3)
Result order = [1, 3, 2]Query: “cat”

85. TF(term) = # times this term appears in doc / total # terms in doc
IDF(term) = loge
(total number of docs / # docs which contain this term)
Relevance with tf-idf
1. The orange cat is a very good cat.
2. My cat ate an orange. Cat cat cat!
3. Cats are the best and I will give
every cat a special cat toy.
1. TF(cat) = 2/8 = 0.25
2. TF(cat) = 4/8 = 0.50
3. TF(cat) = 3/14 = 0.21
IDF(cat) = loge
(3/3)
Result order = [2, 1, 3]Query: “cat”

86. TF(term) = # times this term appears in doc / total # terms in doc
IDF(term) = loge
(total number of docs / # docs which contain this term)
Relevance with tf-idf
1. The orange cat is a good cat.
2. My cat ate an orange.
(assume 100 records which all contain
“cat” in them)
IDF(cat) = loge
(100/100) = 0.0
IDF(orange) = loge
(100/2) = 3.9
Query: “orange cat”

87. TF(term) = # times this term appears in doc / total # terms in doc
IDF(term) = loge
(total number of docs / # docs which contain this term)
Relevance with tf-idf
1. The orange cat is a good cat.
2. My cat ate an orange.
Query: “orange cat”
IDF(cat) = loge
(100/100) = 0.0
IDF(orange) = loge
(100/2) = 3.9
score = score(cat, doc1) + s(orange, doc1) = 0.29*0.0 + 0.14*3.9 = 0.55
score = score(cat, doc2) + s(orange, doc2) = 0.20*0.0 + 0.20*3.9 = 0.78

88. TF(term) = # times this term appears in doc / total # terms in doc
IDF(term) = loge
(total number of docs / # docs which contain this term)
Relevance with tf-idf
1. The orange cat is a good cat.
2. My cat ate an orange.
Result order = [2, 1]Query: “orange cat”
IDF(cat) = loge
(100/100) = 0.0
IDF(orange) = loge
(100/2) = 3.9
score = score(cat, doc1) + s(orange, doc1) = 0.29*0.0 + 0.14*3.9 = 0.55
score = score(cat, doc2) + s(orange, doc2) = 0.20*0.0 + 0.20*3.9 = 0.78
3/7 = 0.43
2/5 = 0.40
1/7 = 0.14
1/5 = 0.20

89. tf-idf
bm25
https://elastic.co/blog/practical-bm25-part-2-the-bm25-algorithm-and-its-variables

90. Relevance Challenges
● Prevent keyword stuffing or other “gaming the system”
● Phrase matching
● Fuzzy matching
● User factors: language, location
● Other factors: quality, recency, randomness, diversity

91. Interesting Challenges
● Scalability
● Relevance
● Query understanding
● Numeric range search
● Faceted search
● Autocomplete
We covered: We did not cover:

92. Agenda
1. Why build search engines? ✓
2. Search indexes ✓
3. Open source tools ✓
4. Interesting challenges ✓

93. Thanks!