Search Fundamentals
We’ve designed this 2-week course to introduce the fundamentals of search to engineers, data scientists, and other technical professionals who are new to the area or interested in working in it. We will cover the basics of indexing, querying, hand-tuned ranking, aggregations, and search user interfaces. To gain practical experience, you will build an application using OpenSearch (an open fork of Elasticsearch) and a public ecommerce dataset. This course will also prepare you for the Search with Machine Learning course that assumes familiarity with search fundamentals as a prerequisite.
Course taught by expert instructors
Grant Ingersoll
Former CTO at Wikimedia
Grant is a CTO, independent consultant and advisor. He is the former CTO of the Wikimedia Foundation and the co-founder and ex-CTO of Lucidworks, co-author of Taming Text, co-founder of Apache Mahout and a long-standing committer on the Apache Lucene and Solr open source projects. Grant’s experience includes managing a large team of engineers, researchers and data scientists at a top ten website as well as engineering a variety of search, question answering, and natural language processing applications for a variety of domains and languages. He earned his B.S. from Amherst College in Math and Computer Science and his M.S. in Computer Science from Syracuse University.
Daniel Tunkelang
Machine Learning Consultant
Daniel is an independent consultant specializing in search, machine learning / AI, and data science. He was a founding employee of Endeca, a search pioneer that Oracle acquired in 2011. He then led engineering and data science teams at Google and LinkedIn. He’s worked with a wide range of consulting clients, including Apple, eBay, Pinterest, Salesforce, Yelp, and Zoom. He wrote a book on Faceted Search, published by Morgan & Claypool, and he blogs on Medium about search-related topics — particularly query understanding. Daniel has degrees in Computer Science and Math from MIT and a PhD in computer science from CMU.
The course
Learn and apply skills with real-world projects.
Software engineers and data scientists, and other technical professionals who are new to the area or interested in working in it.
This class is not intended for experienced search professionals, since it will cover the basics. It is an introductory course, and also serves to prepare students for more advanced material, such as the course on Search with Machine Learning.
Ability to write Python and work with documented libraries.
Comfort working with web applications, Docker basics (e.g. start, stop) and the command line.
Try these prep courses first
- Learn
- Fundamentals of search architecture and main search application components such as indexing, query parsing, and querying
- How search engines ingest, transform, and represent content in the search index
- Querying your index for effective and efficient retrieval
- Basic search operations: managing your search system
- How to use key OpenSearch / Elasticsearch APIs
An ecommerce application using publicly available data that will serve as a baseline for work for the remainder of the course. You will work through the indexing process, as well as implement basic query processing.
- Learn
- How to model and measure search relevance
- Relevance, ranking, diversity – how they all fit together
- How to implement, evaluate, and improve a hand-tune ranking function
- Using facets and aggregations to summarize and refine search results
- Autocomplete, spell correction, snippets, and other search features
You will improve the retrieval, relevance, and ranking of the ecommerce application by adding key search features from the first week.
A course you'll actually complete. AI-powered learning that drives results.
AI-powered learning
Transform your learning programs with personalized learning. Real-time feedback, hints at just the right moment, and the support for learners when they need it, driving 15x engagement.
Live courses by leading experts
Our instructors are renowned experts in AI, data, engineering, product, and business. Deep dive through always-current live sessions and round-the-clock support.
Practice on the cutting edge
Accelerate your learning with projects that mirror the work done at industry-leading tech companies. Put your skills to the test and start applying them today.
Flexible schedule for busy professionals
We know you’re busy, so we made it flexible. Attend live events or review the materials at your own pace. Our course team and global community will support you every step of the way.
Completion certificates
Each course comes with a certificate for learners to add to their resume.
Best-in-class outcomes
15-20x engagement compared to async courses
Support & accountability
You are never alone, we provide support throughout the course.
Get reimbursed by your company
More than half of learners get their Courses and Memberships reimbursed by their company.
Hundreds of companies have dedicated L&D and education budgets that have covered the costs.
Course success stories
Learn together and share experiences with other industry professionals
I loved this course! The content was very detailed yet accessible and relevant, and I especially appreciated the instructors'/TA's willingness to stay on after class / schedule brief times outside to answer my questions and help me through the homework. Fantastic experience!
Grant has a unique combination of breadth and depth in the search space, from designing a search solution for performance and stability at scale, while also having deep expertise in the internals of the engine, such as text analysis, relevancy tuning, query optimization, and index design. You won’t find a better teacher to provide a solid foundation in the theory as well as how to apply it when building real world search applications.
I can think of no better person to teach a class on 'search with machine learning' than Grant Ingersoll. Through his open source work on the Apache Solr search engine and as a founder of the Apache Mahout machine learning framework, Grant has done more to teach developers about the technology concepts and applications of ML and search than anyone in the business. If you type “machine learning “and “search” into Google, the top result is Lucidworks, a company that Grant was the driving force for. This is a no-brainer, take this class from Grant!
I will recommend it to professionals who are interested in working in search. Its a very good balance between getting to know the topic and having a first experience, by being very hands-on.
Grant is an established expert in the area of Search, Machine Learning, and AI! He has the mind of a researcher, an educator and has demonstrated the applicability of these deep topic areas into real-world products used by enterprises. What better way to learn than from someone who is a published author, a hands-on practitioner, and an industry expert?
Daniel is a well-known expert on what useful search looks like in practice. Between his founding role as Endeca's chief scientist, his experience at Google and LinkedIn, and his consulting for numerous tech companies and retailers, he has seen and done it all. If you want to learn about relevance, user happiness, and optimizing search applications so they actually help people find things, you cannot do better than a course from Daniel.
Daniel has unparalleled experience in search and machine learning. He brings practical experiences and has consulted for a wide range of companies from Apple to Zoom.
