Keyword Search
Also called Keyword Matching
The plain "match these words" search everyone already knows from the web.
Think of it like
Typing words into a search box and getting back pages that contain them.
Example
A user types "invoice pdf export" and gets docs mentioning those words, ranked by how strongly they match.
How it actually works
Keyword search ranks documents by how well their words match the query, typically via inverted indexes and frequency-based scoring. It is the familiar baseline: cheap, fast, and good when the user’s words match the content’s words. It falls down on synonyms, misspellings, and intent — which is why "just add keyword search" is rarely the whole answer anymore.
For product teams
A dependable floor for search quality and a sanity check against fancier methods; not sufficient alone for natural questions.
For engineers
Inverted-index term matching with frequency scoring; the lexical half of most hybrid stacks.
Related
- Lexical Search — A form of lexical search.
- Semantic Search — Complemented by meaning-based semantic search.
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