In this article we are going to address the issue of Semantic search, which is of utmost importance today. Semantic search has been the subject of debate and study in various fields, since its influence and relevance are undeniable. Throughout history, Semantic search has played a fundamental role in society, impacting different aspects of daily life. Its importance transcends borders and disciplines, which makes its study and understanding fundamental to understanding the world around us. In this article, we will explore different perspectives and approaches related to Semantic search, with the aim of providing a comprehensive and enriching view on this topic.
Semantic search denotes search with meaning, as distinguished from lexical search where the search engine looks for literal matches of the query words or variants of them, without understanding the overall meaning of the query.[1] Semantic search is an approach to information retrieval that seeks to improve search accuracy by understanding the searcher's intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable dataspace, whether on the Web or within a closed system, to generate more relevant results. Modern semantic search systems often use vector embeddings to represent words, phrases, or documents as numerical vectors, allowing the retrieval engine to measure similarity based on meaning rather than exact keyword matches.[2][3]
Some authors regard semantic search as a set of techniques for retrieving knowledge from richly structured data sources like ontologies and XML as found on the Semantic Web.[4] Such technologies enable the formal articulation of domain knowledge at a high level of expressiveness and could enable the user to specify their intent in more detail at query time.[5] The articulation enhances content relevance and depth by including specific places, people, or concepts relevant to the query.
Tools like Google's Knowledge Graph provide structured relationships between entities to enrich query interpretation.[6]
Models like BERT and Sentence-BERT convert words or sentences into dense vectors for similarity comparison.[7]
Semantic ontologies like Web Ontology Language, Resource Description Framework, and Schema.org organize concepts and relationships, allowing systems to infer related terms and deeper meanings.[8]
Hybrid search models combine lexical retrieval (e.g., BM25) with semantic ranking using pretrained transformer models for optimal performance.[9]