AI-powered search: What you need to know [2025]

The 10 best AI enterprise search tools and platforms [2025]

When [Bookshop.org](http://Bookshop.org)'s small engineering team struggled to push past a 14% search conversion rate, they faced a familiar dilemma. Despite having Elasticsearch—a powerful but complex search solution—their eight-person team was spending more time maintaining search infrastructure than improving their core platform. They needed something different: a solution that could deliver better results with less overhead.

Their challenge reflects a broader reality in modern software development. Every click, every search query, and every page load directly impact business metrics, yet the tools meant to optimize these experiences often become bottlenecks themselves. For engineering teams, especially smaller ones, the complexity of search infrastructure can become a _hidden tax_ on innovation and growth.

This is where Meilisearch comes in. Built to work seamlessly out of the box, it's the solution that lets developers focus on building rather than maintaining. Today, we're taking that mission further with [the launch of Meilisearch AI](https://meilisearch.com.cn/launch-week)—our next step in making it radically easier for developers to build world-class search experiences.

In this article, we'll explore how modern search has evolved beyond simple queries, examine the technical challenges facing development teams, and introduce Meilisearch's innovative solutions—including our new AI capabilities. You'll learn how our approach to developer experience is transforming search implementation, and discover our roadmap for making advanced search features accessible to teams of all sizes.

## Redefining modern search

Modern search experiences extend far beyond the traditional search bar, encompassing two key facets: search and discovery. 

Search can take the appearance of inputs, menus, filters, or the trending UX of conversational search (i.e. chatbots). Discovery, on the other hand, plays a key role in navigating content and suggesting recommendations.

Across industries, we see search and discovery most prevalent as follows:

- **Traditional full-text search & semantic search:** standard in all industries ranging from SaaS to ecommerce, marketplaces, and content platforms
- **Conversational search:** prominent in RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) and AI-enhanced search interfaces like Perplexity
- **Discovery for navigation:** common in social media and content platforms where a feed is the primary navigation
- **Recommendations:** tie in more critically with business value in ecommerce and content platforms

For early-stage startups and SMBs, implementing these search capabilities presents significant technical challenges. The complexity multiplies when adding AI integration and personalization layers. Addressing these pain points diverts the workforce from building core product value. Meilisearch is here to relieve you from this burden, allowing you to focus on what really matters. 

We want Meilisearch built-ins to handle modern use cases like [document embedding](https://meilisearch.com.cn/docs/learn/ai_powered_search/document_template_best_practices). Complex setups—such as managing [heavyweight solutions like Elasticsearch](https://meilisearch.com.cn/blog/meilisearch-vs-elasticsearch), [tweaking a Postgres instance](https://meilisearch.com.cn/blog/postgres-full-text-search-limitations), or handling hybrid search—are additional integration burdens. This ignores the security consideration related to exposing front-end accessible APIs or the analytics necessary to collect business KPIs—things that don’t come packaged with custom-made solutions.

![bookshop_meilisearch.gif](https://unable-actionable-car.media.strapiapp.com/bookshop_meilisearch_9498082583.gif)

These DX considerations impact business metrics down the road as engineering bottlenecks lead to longer time-to-market, hindering growth for companies that want to move fast. In ecommerce, for example, search accuracy directly translates to conversion rate, as shown by how we helped [Bookshop increase search-based purchases by 43%](https://meilisearch.com.cn/blog/bookshop-increases-search-based-purchases). On SaaS and content platforms, discovery enables engagement and adoption growth, both of which are key to keeping churn in check. 

## Leveraging DX to move mountains

Meilisearch is a no-configuration, plug-and-play solution that you can install and forget. At the heart of any search tool—and often the biggest challenge for developers—is ensuring relevant results. **CascadeRank** is our answer to [relevancy fine-tuning](https://meilisearch.com.cn/docs/learn/relevancy/relevancy). Our algorithm uses human-readable ranking rules that enable configuration and easy customization. With Meilisearch, simplicity is key, allowing you to set up and focus on your core tasks. 

Though customization is easy, Meilisearch comes with strong defaults to handle common requirements out of the box—things like being typo-tolerant and prioritizing word proximity. Indeed, we’ve seen [Minipouce get better relevancy with Meilisearch’s default configuration than their previous Typesense setup](https://meilisearch.com.cn/blog/minipouce-top-grade-customer-experience), leading to a 5x search volume increase. 

Scalability is a concern for small teams and enterprises alike. Performance is the name of the game for user-facing search—both for search latency and indexing time. As demonstrated by [Podscan.fm](http://Podscan.fm) [searching across 600GB of data](https://x.com/arvidkahl/status/1807889668748275802), search remains fast against large datasets. Our [next-generation indexer boasts 4x faster updates](https://meilisearch.com.cn/blog/introducing-indexer-2024), making Meilisearch suitable at scale for write-intensive workflows, too.

[![arvid-kahl-tweet.png](https://unable-actionable-car.media.strapiapp.com/arvid_kahl_tweet_0c41da4824.png)
](https://x.com/arvidkahl/status/1807889668748275802)

When it comes to security, no compromise is possible. So Meilisearch provides fundamental security features to handle simple and complex use cases. Meilisearch facilitates [API key management](https://meilisearch.com.cn/docs/learn/security/basic_security) to facilitate multi-environments. The built-in [multi-tenancy features](https://meilisearch.com.cn/docs/learn/security/multitenancy_tenant_tokens) also enable more advanced security patterns, allowing developers to customize their access rules.

Using our expertise in search requirements across various customers, we built [Meilisearch Cloud](https://meilisearch.com.cn/cloud). It’s the quickest way to get started. In addition to freeing teams from managing infrastructure, it integrates analytics and monitoring, making it [the preferred production platform for companies like HitPay](https://meilisearch.com.cn/blog/hitpay-streamlines-search). Open-source Meilisearch can be self-hosted via Docker and a plethora of hosting platforms. 

This feature set positions Meilisearch well as a simple solution to get the best of modern search experience. This includes benefiting from an easy LLM integration to leverage AI-powered solutions.

## Future-proofing your search strategy

With native [hybrid and vector search](https://meilisearch.com.cn/docs/learn/ai_powered_search/getting_started_with_ai_search) integration, Meilisearch makes it simple to implement AI-powered search capabilities. But we’re not stopping there—our 2025 roadmap is packed with features enabling businesses to uncover more value from AI while sustaining performance and scalability.

### Improved conversions with personalization

[Our research shows that personalization significantly improves conversion rates](https://meilisearch.com.cn/blog/personalization-recommendations) across diverse business types. We aim to release a personalization framework enabling the collection of end-user context on each request. This comprehensive context management system allows developers to leverage user preferences, recent interactions, and behavioral patterns to further customize the relevancy of results on a per-user basis. 

### Retrieval augmented generation without overhead 

Although Meilisearch already enables [building retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)](https://meilisearch.com.cn/blog/how-to-build-rag), we want to integrate built-in RAG capabilities in the engine, seamlessly combining full-text search, vector search, and LLM interaction. Then, we want to tackle inherent problems in state-of-the-art RAG applications by tackling the orchestration of filtering, ranking, and results merging in RAG scenarios. Of course, we want this to come with strong defaults, making it easy for developers to get started.

### Advanced ranking integrations

Our goal is to provide a native way for users to leverage AI reranking models to improve the relevancy of results. This provides a more flexible approach to configuring result relevancy by allowing real-time results reranking based on user context and behavior. We also want to enable organizations to integrate with their own custom ranking models to allow for further dynamic adjustment of results based on hand-picked factors.

### Reliability as you scale

We also plan to improve Meilisearch’s infrastructure to handle additional use cases better. In particular, we want to continue improving the distributed system capabilities for better scaling and high availability by building upon our sharding experiments with [federated remote search](https://meilisearch.com.cn/docs/learn/multi_search/implement_sharding). Another layer of performance is integrating more sophisticated caching mechanisms to improve out-of-the-box performance. Monitoring and observability are also continuously improved based on user feedback.

## Meilisearch AI, refreshingly simple search DX

The release of Meilisearch AI marks a new age for Meilisearch users, fully integrating with the modern landscape of AI-powered applications. But it’s also a continuous fulfillment of our core value—making good search UX easy to build. We believe focusing on developer experience enables engineers to achieve faster time-to-value and maintain focus on their core business.

Meilisearch ships frequently to keep packaging built-in features, enabling fast-shipping companies to do what they do best. For more information on the Meilisearch AI release, consult our [launch week page](https://meilisearch.com.cn/launch-week). 

Start with a [14-day free trial of Meilisearch Cloud](https://cloud.meilisearch.com/) or [request a demo](https://dub.sh/meili-sales) to discuss your needs with our search experts.

Building the future of search with Meilisearch AI

What are vector embeddings? A complete guide [2025]

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What is a vector database? What you need to know [2025]

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You know what's amazing about search? It's at the heart of how people interact with your application. But let's be honest: building and managing search infrastructure can feel like you're spending more time wrestling with configuration than creating value for your users. That's why we're excited to share something that changes this completely: the Meilisearch MCP server.

## Why MCP? Building bridges between search and AI

Before we dive in, let's talk about what MCP (Model Context Protocol) is and why we're excited about it. [MCP](https://www.anthropic.com/news/model-context-protocol) is an emerging open protocol that standardizes how applications provide context to Large Language Models (LLMs). Think of it as a universal translator between your tools and AI models.

Even though MCP isn't yet fully standardized, we believe it represents the future of how developers will interact with their tools. Here's why:
- It creates a consistent way for AI models to interact with different tools and services
- It puts security and user control at the forefront
- It enables natural language interactions while maintaining precise control
- It's being built in the open, with input from the developer community

## From complex commands to natural conversations

Remember the last time you needed to update your search settings? It probably involved looking up API documentation, crafting the perfect JSON payload, and triple-checking your syntax. We've all been there. But what if you could just tell your search engine what you want, in plain English?

That's exactly what we've built. By implementing MCP, we've enabled natural conversations with Meilisearch through AI assistants like Claude. Here's what this means in practice using [our movies database](https://where2watch.meilisearch.com/) as an example:

### Before:
```bash
curl \
  -X POST 'https://:7700/indexes/movies/settings' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer MASTER_KEY' \
  --data-binary '{
    "rankingRules": [
      "words",
      "typo",
      "proximity",
      "attribute",
      "sort",
      "exactness"
    ]
  }'
```

### After:
> "Update the ranking rules for the movies index to prioritize word matches and handle typos."

That's it. When paired with advanced LLMs like Claude Sonnet, the AI understands your intent and handles all the technical details behind the scenes. No more context-switching between documentation tabs.

## What can you do with it today?

Thanks to the capabilities of modern LLMs, our MCP integration already enables natural language control over your Meilisearch instance. Here's what you can do right now:

1. **Index management made simple**
```"Create a new index for our product catalog and optimize it for e-commerce search"```
The AI will guide you through setting up your index with appropriate configurations for e-commerce.

2. **Search optimization**
```"Our users are having trouble finding products when they make typos. How can we fix this?"```
Get instant guidance on configuring typo tolerance and seeing real-time results.

3. **Performance insights**
```"How is our search performance looking? Any areas we should optimize?"```
Understand your search analytics and get actionable recommendations.

## How does it work?

Our current MCP implementation exposes Meilisearch's capabilities through a set of carefully designed tools that AI assistants can use to manage your search infrastructure. When paired with advanced LLMs like [Claude Sonnet](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-3-5-sonnet), these tools enable natural conversations about complex search operations.

The best part? It works seamlessly with Claude Desktop and other MCP-compatible clients, giving you:
- Natural language control over your search infrastructure
- Instant access to best practices and optimization tips
- Real-time insights and analytics

## Getting started in 2 minutes

1. Install [Claude Desktop](https://claude.ai/download) (it's free!)
2. Add our MCP server to your configuration:

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "meilisearch": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["-n", "meilisearch-mcp"]
    }
  }
}
```
3. Start managing your search like you're chatting with a colleague!

## Building the future of search

This is just the beginning of our mission to make search infrastructure more accessible. Here's what we're working on next:

### Smart prompts
We're developing pre-built templates for common scenarios like:
- Optimizing index settings for specific use cases (e-commerce, documentation, etc.)
- Debugging search behavior and performance issues
- Understanding and improving search analytics
- Implementing industry-specific best practices

### Enhanced capabilities
- More sophisticated analytics and monitoring tools
- Expanded AI assistant integrations
- Advanced collaborative features for teams
- Deeper integration with Meilisearch Cloud

## Open source and open for contributions

True to our values, the Meilisearch MCP server is completely open source. We believe in building in public and learning from our community. Check out our implementation, contribute, or adapt it for your needs:

[GitHub repository](https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch-mcp)

## Join us in simplifying search

- ⭐ Star [our repository](https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch)
- 💬 Join our [Discord community](https://discord.meilisearch.com/) & share your use cases (or do it on social media and tag us)
- 🛠️ Contribute to development on [GitHub](https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch-mcp)

We're excited to see how you'll use this to build better search experiences. Try it out and let us know what you think!

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