How Reddit Uses Machine Learning to Improve Search Performance

It was great talking to Grant Ingersoll, Founder and CTO of Lucidworks, about the integration of Lucidworks with Reddit, bringing their search application development platform to the Reddit user interface. The integration will power Reddit’s search functionality, improve user search experience for hundreds of millions of Reddit community members, and simplify the process of building custom search experiences for Reddit’s internal teams.

Reddit, the home of conversation online, aggregates social news and uses reader ratings submitted by its active communities to promote popular content. Reddit is organized by communities or “subreddits” based on interests such as news, science, movies, books, etc. The search bar is a critical tool for community members to find more specific content not outlined as subtopics.

With Fusion, Reddit will leverage best-in-class search capabilities for efficient scaling, monitoring, and improved search relevance. Fusion’s built-in machine learning will analyze and incorporate user behavior into Reddit search results, optimizing the user’s search experience over time without the need for heavy manual intervention. As a search platform, Fusion also enables Reddit to customize the user experience (UX) as search needs evolve, instead of treating search as a black box.

“Reddit relies heavily on content discovery, as our primary value proposition is giving our people a home for discovering, sharing, and discussing the things they’re most passionate about,” says Nick Caldwell, Vice President of Engineering at Reddit. “As Reddit has grown, so have our communities’ expectations of the experience we provide, and improving our search platform will help us address a long-time user pain point in a meaningful way. We expect Fusion’s customization and machine learning functionality will significantly elevate our search capabilities and transform the way people discover content on the site.”

Companies today store, share, and create more data than ever before and effective information retrieval has become a major roadblock to enterprise productivity. Search software is taking on increased importance as businesses require instant access to their most relevant content in order to succeed in highly competitive industries. Fusion is quick to deploy, easy to maintain, and highly functional. The platform has an accessible user interface and customization capabilities that help customers like Reddit quickly deliver the most relevant search results to users.

"When you think about the Internet, you think about a handful of sites — Facebook, Google, Youtube, and Reddit. My personal opinion is that Reddit is the most important of all of these,” explains Lucidworks CEO, Will Hayes. “It connects strangers from all over the world around an incredibly diverse group of topics. Content is created at a breakneck pace and at massive scale. Because of this, the search function becomes an incredibly important piece of the UX puzzle. Lucidworks Fusion allows Reddit to tackle the scale and complexity issues and provide the world-class search experience that their users expect.”