CategoryIndex

All about the Search Engine Reverse-Index

The inverted index data structure (also referred as reverse-index) is a central component of a typical search engine indexing algorithm. A goal of a search engine implementation is to optimize the speed of the query: find the documents where word X occurs.

Index Design Factors

• Merge factors, so multiple indexers can work asynchronously
• Storage techniques, how to store the data (compressed)
• Index size, how much storage is required
• Lookup speed, how quickly a word can be found
• Maintenance, how is the index maintained over time
• Fault tolerance & reliable, dealing with issues and index corruption