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Hybrid search using vectors and full text in Azure AI Search

A hybrid search is a single query request configured for both full-text and vector queries. It executes against a search index that contains searchable, plain-text content and generated embeddings. For query purposes, hybrid search:

  • Is a single query request that includes both search and vectors query parameters.
  • Executes full-text search and vector search in parallel.
  • Merges results from each query using Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF).

This article explains the concepts, benefits, and limitations of hybrid search. Links at the end provide usage instructions and next steps. You can also watch the embedded video for an explanation of how hybrid retrieval contributes to high-quality generative search applications.

Hybrid search combines the strengths of vector search and keyword search. The advantage of vector search is finding information that's conceptually similar to your search query, even if there are no keyword matches in the inverted index. The advantage of keyword or full-text search is precision, with the ability to apply optional semantic ranking that improves the quality of the initial results. Some scenarios, such as querying over product codes, highly specialized jargon, dates, and people's names, can perform better with keyword search because it can identify exact matches.

Benchmark testing on real-world and benchmark datasets indicates that hybrid retrieval with semantic ranker offers significant benefits in search relevance.

The following video explains how hybrid retrieval gives you optimal grounding data for generating useful AI responses.

How does hybrid search work?

In a search index, vector fields containing embeddings coexist with textual and numerical fields, allowing you to formulate hybrid queries that execute simultaneously. Hybrid queries take advantage of existing text-based functionality like filtering, faceting, sorting, scoring profiles, and semantic ranking on your text fields, while executing a similarity search against vectors in a single search request.

Hybrid search combines results from both full-text and vector queries, which use different ranking functions such as BM25 for text, and Hierarchical Navigable Small World (HNSW) and exhaustive K Nearest Neighbors (eKNN) for vectors. An RRF algorithm merges the results. The query response provides just one result set, using RRF to rank the unified results.

Structure of a hybrid query

Hybrid search relies on a search index that contains fields of various data types, including plain text and numbers, geo coordinates if you want geospatial search, and vectors to mathematically represent a chunk of text. You can use almost all query capabilities in Azure AI Search with a vector query, except for pure text client-side interactions, such as autocomplete and suggestions.

A representative hybrid query might look like the following. For brevity, the vector queries have placeholder values.

POST https://{{searchServiceName}}.search.windows.net/indexes/hotels-vector-quickstart/docs/search?api-version=2025-09-01
content-type: application/JSON

{
    "count": true,
    "search": "historic hotel walk to restaurants and shopping",
    "select": "HotelId, HotelName, Category, Description, Address/City, Address/StateProvince",
    "filter": "geo.distance(Location, geography'POINT(-77.03241 38.90166)') le 300",
    "vectorFilterMode": "postFilter",
    "facets": [ "Address/StateProvince"], 
    "vectorQueries": [
        {
            "kind": "vector",
            "vector": [ <array of embeddings> ]
            "k": 50,
            "fields": "DescriptionVector",
            "exhaustive": true,
            "oversampling": 20
        },
        {
            "kind": "vector",
            "vector": [ <array of embeddings> ]
            "k": 50,
            "fields": "Description_frVector",
            "exhaustive": false,
            "oversampling": 10
        }
    ],
    "skip": 0,
    "top": 10,
    "queryType": "semantic",
    "queryLanguage": "en-us",
    "semanticConfiguration": "my-semantic-config"
}

Key points:

  • search specifies a single full-text search query.
  • vectorQueries specifies vector queries, which can be multiple, targeting multiple vector fields. If the embedding space includes multi-lingual content, vector queries can find the match with no language analyzers or translation required. If you're using semantic ranker, set k to 50 to maximize its inputs.
  • select specifies which fields to return in results, which should be human-readable text fields if you're showing them to users or sending them to a large language model (LLM).
  • filters can specify geospatial search or other inclusion and exclusion criteria, such as whether parking is included. The geospatial query in this example finds hotels within a 300-kilometer radius of Washington D.C. You can apply the filter at the beginning or end of query processing. If you're using semantic ranker, you probably want post-filtering as the last step, but you should test to confirm which behavior is best for your queries.
  • facets can be used to compute facet buckets over results that are returned from hybrid queries.
  • queryType=semantic invokes semantic ranker, applying machine reading comprehension to surface more relevant search results. Semantic ranking is optional. If you aren't using this feature, remove the last three lines of the hybrid query.

Filters and facets target data structures within the index that are distinct from the inverted indexes used for full-text search and the vector indexes used for vector search. As such, when filters and faceted operations execute, the search engine can apply the operational result to the hybrid search results in the response.

Notice how there's no orderby in the query. Explicit sort orders override relevanced-ranked results, so if you want similarity and BM25 relevance, omit sorting in your query.

A response from the query might look like the following JSON.

{
    "@odata.count": 3,
    "@search.facets": {
        "Address/StateProvince": [
            {
                "count": 1,
                "value": "NY"
            },
            {
                "count": 1,
                "value": "VA"
            }
        ]
    },
    "value": [
        {
            "@search.score": 0.03333333507180214,
            "@search.rerankerScore": 2.5229012966156006,
            "HotelId": "49",
            "HotelName": "Swirling Currents Hotel",
            "Description": "Spacious rooms, glamorous suites and residences, rooftop pool, walking access to shopping, dining, entertainment and the city center.",
            "Category": "Luxury",
            "Address": {
                "City": "Arlington",
                "StateProvince": "VA"
            }
        },
        {
            "@search.score": 0.032522473484277725,
            "@search.rerankerScore": 2.111117362976074,
            "HotelId": "48",
            "HotelName": "Nordick's Valley Motel",
            "Description": "Only 90 miles (about 2 hours) from the nation's capital and nearby most everything the historic valley has to offer.  Hiking? Wine Tasting? Exploring the caverns?  It's all nearby and we have specially priced packages to help make our B&B your home base for fun while visiting the valley.",
            "Category": "Boutique",
            "Address": {
                "City": "Washington D.C.",
                "StateProvince": null
            }
        }
    ]
}

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