# Combining with traditional search

**Assumed Knowledge**: Vectors\
**Target Audience**: General Audience\
**Reading Time:** 3 minutes

If you are interested in comparing vector and traditional search, we recommend firstly looking over the playground which can be found here: <https://playground.getvectorai.com/interact/search/text?collection=quora>.&#x20;

![An example of traditional (left) vs vector search (right) ](https://1051526003-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-MTAoGc3QCIn04xUpURg%2F-MUCV6E4nFz9Hift5V5E%2F-MUCWJ0hS65aOp4sxo_f%2Fimage.png?alt=media\&token=e28d0990-8b57-4ea7-a7c7-c9364b049fa2)

While the results may appear obvious, we will go over how this works and is built.&#x20;

**Firstly - what is traditional search?**

Traditional search is reliant on words and the number of times a word may appear in a specific document. For example, if we are searching for the word "dog", sentences where the word "dog" appear more times will end up occurring. However, as a result, if we search for the question "what is a dog", we will note that no results will come up because there may be no results that contains all the words.&#x20;

**So how does vector search resolve this?**

Vector search instead identifies the meaning behind the strung together text so instead of interpreting every word for what it is worth - it identifies the semantic meaning of the strung together text and outputs a vector for search on all the results. As a result - vector search becomes a useful tool.&#x20;

**However - we can sometimes get the best results from combining traditional search with vector search**.&#x20;

We can sometimes get better results from combining traditional search with vector search. This is useful because it takes into consideration the exact words we type a well as the meaning of the strung-together text. Vector AI allows us to do this using the hybrid search API. You can find out more about its use case and application in [Combining Vector Search With Traditional Search](https://learn.getvectorai.com/vector-search/searching-with-vector-ai/vector-search-vs-traditional-search/combining-vector-search-with-traditional-search).

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