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Technical 1 min read February 10, 2026

Understanding Hybrid Search: Why BM25 + Vector Search is the Future

Learn how combining traditional keyword search with semantic vectors can improve retrieval accuracy by 40%.

R
RAG Engine Team
# Hybrid Search: The Future of Information Retrieval Hybrid search combines the best of both worlds: traditional keyword search (BM25) and modern vector search (semantic embeddings). ## Why Hybrid Search? Traditional keyword search is great for exact matches, but fails to understand the meaning behind queries. Vector search excels at semantic understanding but can miss exact keyword matches. ## How It Works RAG Engine combines both approaches: - **BM25 scoring** for keyword relevance - **Vector similarity** for semantic understanding - **Reciprocal Rank Fusion** to merge results This approach improves retrieval accuracy by up to 40% compared to using either method alone. ## Getting Started With RAG Engine, hybrid search is enabled by default. Simply upload your documents and start querying.
#hybrid-search #bm25 #vector-search #rag

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