Using metadata to enhance your search experience
Blog post from Vectara
Large language models (LLMs) like Vectara are transforming search by providing highly relevant results without prior language configuration, and their effectiveness can be enhanced through the use of metadata fields. Metadata, which provides context to data, enables more precise search results by allowing users to filter content based on various criteria, such as geographic location or presence of personally identifiable information (PII). This approach supports privacy by tagging content with metadata indicating PII presence, thereby enabling filtered results based on user permissions. Additionally, metadata can be used to boost or bury search results and enrich them by attaching related information at index time, improving the user experience by offering more contextual insights and relevant links. Vectara's search capabilities leverage these metadata techniques, employing automatic, custom, and pass-through metadata fields to enhance query filtering, result boosting, and enrichment, all while supporting cross-language searches and providing users with natural language answers.