What is Semantic Search?
TL;DR
AI-powered search that understands meaning and context rather than just matching keywords. Core technology behind RAG.
Semantic Search: Definition & Explanation
Semantic search is an AI technology that understands the meaning and context of text to find relevant information, unlike traditional keyword-matching search. It uses embedding (vector representation) technology to convert queries and documents into vector space, then calculates semantic proximity using metrics like cosine similarity. A search for 'how to fix a car' would match a document about 'automobile repair procedures' even though the exact words differ. It is widely used in RAG systems, AI search engines, internal knowledge bases, and e-commerce product search.