How I Optimized E-Commerce Search from 2 Seconds to 50ms

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Greetings fellow humans, bots, and everyone in between! Ever found yourself baffled by the uncanny accuracy of product recommendations on your favourite e-commerce site? Or stumbled upon a product you didn’t even know you needed, thanks to the magic of search algorithms? Well, hold onto your hats, because today, we’re diving deep into the AI-powered engine room that makes this all possible.

The Problem: When Speed Takes a Backseat

Picture this: you’re in the R&D lab, surrounded by enough caffeine to fuel a rocket launch, staring at a MySQL query that’s slower than a sloth on a Sunday afternoon. That was our starting point. Our initial product search, relying on the good ol’ LIKE operator, took a leisurely 2 seconds to sift through millions of product rows. In the lightning-fast world of e-commerce, 2 seconds is an eternity. It’s like waiting for dial-up internet to connect while your pizza gets cold

The Solution: A Trifecta of AI Awesomeness

But fear not, dear readers, for we didn’t succumb to the tyranny of slow search! Like a superhero assembling their gadget arsenal, we harnessed the power of three…