Cheat at Search Essentials: Vectors and Embeddings

Hosted by Doug Turnbull

Fri, Sep 26, 2025

4:30 PM UTC (45 minutes)

Virtual (Zoom)

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61 students

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Cheat at Search with LLMs
Doug Turnbull
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What you'll learn

Learn how embeddings implement 'semantic search'

What is a 'vector embedding' and why do they capture meaning? And how can that be used to build a search system?

Tackle the practical realities vector retrieval

Why do we need a vector database? And why are they different from traditional search engines? Should they be different?

How are vector + lexical techniques combined?

Offer a concrete and concise explanation of how you will help students understand and apply this lesson.

Why this topic matters

For decades, search techniques were dominated by lexical search. IE some form of 'dumb token matching'. Yet in the last decade, embedding based retrieval has completely upended that paradigm, giving us results focused on semantic search before strings.

You'll learn from

Doug Turnbull

Ex-Reddit, Ex-Shopify Search

Doug Turnbull is an expert in search technology and relevance engineering, currently serving as Principal Engineer at Daydream, where he builds hybrid search systems combining lexical and vector retrieval, and develops LLM-driven quality programs for e-commerce search. Previously, he led machine-learning-driven search initiatives at Reddit, significantly improving search relevance through Learning to Rank methods. Doug also advanced e-commerce search at Shopify and served as CTO at OpenSource Connections. He co-authored the influential book Relevant Search (Manning, 2016) and created popular open-source tools, including Quepid and the Elasticsearch Learning to Rank plugin. He regularly speaks at industry conferences, making search relevance accessible to engineers.

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