# Ridhi Dua > Expert AI & Search Solutions ## Posts - [Hybrid Search vs Keyword vs Vector Search: How to Choose](https://ridhidua.com/hybrid-search-vs-keyword-vs-vector): Keyword search misses meaning and vector search misses exact terms. See where each fails, when hybrid search is worth the complexity, and how to test it. - [How to Fix Zero-Result Searches: A Practical Playbook for E-commerce Teams](https://ridhidua.com/fix-zero-result-searches): A zero-result search sends the shopper away empty-handed. Sort each one into four causes, fix them in order of effort, and measure the gain. - [Why Your Search Bar Might Be Your Biggest Revenue Leak](https://ridhidua.com/search-bar-revenue-leak): How to size the revenue your site search loses to failed searches, using your own search logs: zero-result rate, search-to-purchase rate and a worked example. - [Is Your E-Commerce Search Costing You Sales? A 10-Point Health Check](https://ridhidua.com/ecommerce-search-health-check): Ten checks you can run in about twenty minutes to find where your site search is losing sales, from typo tolerance to zero-results pages and filters. - [Algolia Alternatives: When It Makes Sense to Own Your Search](https://ridhidua.com/algolia-alternatives): Algolia bills by search request and record. Here is how to estimate your bill, what owning your search engine involves, and when staying put is the better call. - [AI for Business: Before You Build an AI Agent, Ask This One Question](https://ridhidua.com/before-you-build-an-ai-agent): Before you build an AI agent, ask one question: what’s the least amount of technology we need to solve this reliably? Often the answer is a checklist, a workflow or conventional software, with AI added only where it earns its place. This is the question I ask first in my applied AI and automation work. It’s August 2026, and it feels like there’s an AI agent for almost everything. Scheduling a meeting? There’s an agent for that. Sorting your inbox? Agent. Tracking inventory? Agent. The pitch is tempting. Agents sound powerful, modern, and a little bit magical. But that doesn’t mean…  - [What Really Goes Into a Website: A Beginner's Guide](https://ridhidua.com/what-really-goes-into-a-website-a-beginners-guide): So you’ve decided to take your business online. Maybe you’re launching a shop, a service, or a brand-new idea, and you’ve realized that a website isn’t just a nice-to-do — it’s the foundation everything else sits on. Here’s the catch: a website isn’t one project. It’s a dozen or so smaller projects stacked together, each with its own skill set, timeline, and budget. Understanding these pieces upfront will save you money, stress, and a lot of "wait, we need to redo that" moments down the road. The Big Picture, in Plain English Before we get into the technical details, here’s a…  - [How to Make a SaaS Explainer Video With a Product Demo](https://ridhidua.com/how-to-make-a-saas-explainer-video-with-a-product-demo): A step-by-step guide to making a SaaS explainer video with a real product demo yourself — script, voiceover, scenes, recording, and the step not to automate. - [OCR vs Document Intelligence: Why "We Scanned It" Isn't "We Can Use It"](https://ridhidua.com/ocr-vs-document-intelligence): OCR vs document intelligence is the difference between reading a page and understanding it. Scanning (OCR) turns a picture of a page into text; document intelligence works out what that text means, such as which number is the total and which clause is the deadline. Many businesses pay for the first and expect the second. It is the kind of gap I close in my applied AI and document automation work. Imagine you scan an invoice. What comes out the other side is a wall of text: the vendor’s name, the line items, the total, the due date, all run together…  - [How I Made My Own SaaS Explainer Video as a Developer](https://ridhidua.com/how-i-made-my-own-saas-explainer-video-as-a-developer): A software engineer with no video-editing experience built a polished SaaS explainer video using Remotion. The full process — what worked and what to skip. - [What is RAG? How Retrieval-Augmented Generation is Changing the Way Businesses Use AI](https://ridhidua.com/what-is-rag): What is RAG? Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is a way of making AI answer from your own documents instead of from memory: the system retrieves the relevant passages first, then the model writes its answer from them. It is the well-established fix for AI that makes things up, and it is the kind of system I build in my applied AI and automation work. There’s a quiet frustration building inside most organizations that have tried AI. The demos looked impressive. The technology clearly works. But somewhere between the pilot and production, things went wrong. The AI started making things up. It gave…  ## Pages - [Elasticsearch & OpenSearch Consultant](https://ridhidua.com/elasticsearch-opensearch-consultant): Ridhi Dua Book a free 30-minute cluster review Free cluster review Elasticsearch Consultant for Teams With Slow Queries and Rising Cluster Bills I am an independent Elasticsearch expert. I fix what pages your on-call engineer, from slow queries and out-of-memory crashes to a cluster bill that keeps growing. I work on Elasticsearch and OpenSearch, and if the engine you have is the right one, I will tell you not to switch. Book a free 30-minute cluster review p99 latency at peak Out-of-memory crashes Stale search results Previously at 15+ years building search and data systems Elasticsearch and OpenSearch problems I fix…  - [Find Your E-Commerce Search Health Score](https://ridhidua.com/find-your-e-commerce-search-health-score-here): [ridhi_audit slug=”ecommerce-search”] - [E-Commerce Search Health Check](https://ridhidua.com/e-commerce-search-audit): [ridhi_audit slug=”ecommerce-search”] - [Privacy Policy](https://ridhidua.com/privacy-policy): Welcome to https://ridhidua.com (the “Site”). We understand that privacy online is important to users of our Site, especially when conducting business. This statement governs our privacy policies concerning those users of the Site (“Visitors”) who visit without transacting business and Visitors who register to transact business on the Site and make use of the various services offered by Ridhi Dua (collectively, “Services”) (“Authorized Customers”). “Personally Identifiable Information” Refers to any information that can be used to identify, contact, or locate the person to whom such information pertains, including, but not limited to, name, address, phone number, fax number, email address, financial…  - [Terms of Use](https://ridhidua.com/terms-of-use): These Terms govern your access to, and usage of all content, Products, and Services available at https://ridhidua.com website (the “Service”) operated by Ridhi Dua (“us”, “we”, or “our”). Your access to our services is subject to your acceptance, without modification, of all of the terms and conditions contained herein and all other operating rules and policies published and that may be published from time to time by us. Please read the Agreement carefully before accessing or using our Services. By accessing or using any part of our Services, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree…  - [CCPA – California Consumer Privacy Act](https://ridhidua.com/ccpa-california-consumer-privacy-act): Definitions Website https://ridhidua.com or Ridhi Dua The owner (or We) Indicates the natural person(s) or legal entity that provides this Website to Users. User (or You) Indicates any natural person or legal entity using this Website. This Privacy Notice for California Residents supplements the information contained in the Website’s Privacy Policy and applies solely to all visitors, users, and others who reside in the State of California. We adopted this notice to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA), and any terms defined in the CCPA have the same meaning when used in this notice. Information We Collect…  - [OpenSearch Consulting & Implementation Services](https://ridhidua.com/opensearch-consulting-and-implementation-services): I help engineering and product teams get OpenSearch to perform in production: fast queries, relevant results, clean data in, and a cluster that doesn’t fall over under load. I also work in Elasticsearch and Vespa, so I’ll tell you honestly which engine fits your problem. I’m Ridhi Dua. I have 15+ years of experience building search systems, including enterprise platforms at global financial institutions that handled hundreds of millions of documents a day with sub-second query times. More recently I’ve applied that to online stores and document-heavy teams. Book a 30-minute call Where OpenSearch projects go wrong A working deployment and…  - [Monitoring & Risk](https://ridhidua.com/solutions/monitoring-risk): All solutions Monitoring & Risk Be assured that your AI and tech systems are running smoothly while you focus on your business. I build systems that surface meaningful anomalies, reduce noise and help teams spend less time on false positives and more time acting on what matters. Book a 30-minute call View case studies A broken feed Schema drift Too many false positives What I build Automatic Red-Flagging Pattern & Anomaly Detection Hybrid rule-based and ML systems that flag what matters in high-volume data. Know When Something Breaks Data Quality & Pipeline Monitoring Checks on freshness, volume and schema drift, so…  - [Applied AI Automation](https://ridhidua.com/solutions/applied-ai-automation): All solutions AI Document Processing That Shows Its Sources I build AI that reads your documents, answers questions about them and does the repetitive work around them. Every answer links back to the passage it came from, and a person checks anything that matters before it goes out. Build practical AI systems for retrieval, knowledge access, document workflows, automation and decision support, with outputs that can be traced back to their sources. Book a 30-minute call View case studies Scans that aren’t text Hours of retyping An invented source On this page What I build The problem How an engagement runs…  - [Data Analytics](https://ridhidua.com/solutions/data-analytics): All solutions Data Analytics Good decisions depend on good information. Make your data easier to understand and act on. Build the foundations needed to understand demand, customer behaviour, operational performance and business trends with greater speed and confidence. Book a 30-minute call View case studies Conflicting reports Demand you’re not seeing A report library nobody opens What I build See Demand the Day It Happens Real-Time Analytics Pipelines (Kafka, OLAP) Live dashboards built on the same data pipeline as your search, surfacing zero-result queries, demand spikes and inventory or pricing shifts as they happen. The Demand You’re Not Seeing Search &…  - [Data Engineering](https://ridhidua.com/solutions/data-pipeline-engineering): All solutions Data Engineering Turn fragmented data into dependable infrastructure. I design and build scalable pipelines that bring fragmented data together, automate processing and reduce the operational work required to keep information current. Book a 30-minute call View case studies PDF-locked data Days to show up in search Disconnected databases What I build Clean, Trustworthy Data Data Normalization & Extraction Reconciling messy, inconsistent, or PDF-locked data into clean, structured, searchable records. Instant Inventory Visibility Real-Time Indexing Pipelines New or changed data becomes searchable within minutes, not days. Knowledge That Stays Current Knowledge Base Sync Pipelines Keeps a retrieval system current automatically…  - [Search & Discovery](https://ridhidua.com/solutions/search-discovery): All solutions Search That Finds What Your Customers Meant I fix site search that returns the wrong results, or none. Shoppers type what they want in their own words. Your catalog is written in yours. The gap between the two is where sales disappear. Book a 30-minute call Free e-commerce search audit Zero results The loudest models first Ranked by text match On this page What I build What a broken search looks like What you get Proof Questions What I build Search That Understands Intent Hybrid Semantic + Keyword Search Matches meaning and intent alongside exact keywords, so natural-language and…  - [Financial Services](https://ridhidua.com/industries/financial-services): All industries Financial Services Make transaction, client and market data easier to search, monitor and reconcile across systems that were never built to talk to each other. Build the pipelines, controls and review workflows that surface risk early, cut the time spent on manual checks and give teams one reliable view of what changed. Book a 30-minute call View case studies Last year’s policy Three systems per KYC check Friday’s report On this page Search & Discovery Data Engineering Applied AI Automation Data Analytics Monitoring & Risk Search & Discovery Making it easy to find the right thing, fast. What this…  - [Healthcare & Pharma](https://ridhidua.com/industries/healthcare-pharma): All industries Healthcare & Pharma Make large volumes of information easier to search, monitor and act on. Build systems that help teams surface meaningful signals while reducing the noise that slows down investigation and decision-making. Book a 30-minute call Read the case study Zero results Last quarter’s formulary 55 of 60 alerts are nothing On this page Search & Discovery Data Engineering Applied AI Automation Data Analytics Monitoring & Risk Search & Discovery Making it easy to find the right thing, fast. What this looks like A nurse searches “blood thinner interactions” and gets zero results because the formulary lists it…  - [Legal & Compliance](https://ridhidua.com/industries/legal-compliance): All industries Contract Review and Legal Search That Cite Their Sources I build search and review tools for legal and compliance teams that find the clause and show the exact sentence it came from. That is the difference between AI you can rely on and AI you have to double-check. Reduce time spent searching, reviewing and manually connecting information across systems. Book a 30-minute call Read the case study The clause The page The marked sentence On this page Search & Discovery Data Engineering Applied AI Automation Data Analytics Monitoring & Risk Search & Discovery Making it easy to find the…  - [Auto Parts & Industrial Supply](https://ridhidua.com/industries/auto-parts-industrial-supply): All industries Auto Parts & Industrial Supply Make complex product catalogues easier for customers and sales teams to navigate. Automate workflows, connect fragmented product data, improve search and help customers identify the right part or product with greater confidence. Book a 30-minute call View case studies The wrong trim Four SKUs for one part A stale supplier feed On this page Search & Discovery Data Engineering Applied AI Automation Data Analytics Monitoring & Risk Search & Discovery Making it easy to find the right thing, fast. What this looks like “brake pad for a 2019 F-150 XLT” returns a pad that…  - [E-Commerce & Marketplaces](https://ridhidua.com/industries/e-commerce-marketplaces): All industries Search and Data for Online Stores and Marketplaces Shoppers describe what they want. Your catalog describes what you sell. When the two don’t match, they see zero results, the wrong results, or yesterday’s prices, and they leave. I fix that for online stores and marketplaces whose catalogs are large, inconsistent or changing daily. Improve workflows, search relevance, product discovery and conversion without forcing your team to work around a broken search experience. Book a 30-minute call Free e-commerce search audit Zero results The wrong results Yesterday’s prices On this page Search & Discovery Data Engineering Applied AI Automation Data…  - [Book](https://ridhidua.com/calendar): Let’s talk about your problem. Pick a time, or send a message — whichever’s easier. 30-minute intro call · no cost Open times come straight from my calendar. Pick one that suits you and it’s booked — no back and forth. Pick a time Opens Google Calendar in a new tab. Photo: Estée Janssens on Unsplash. Or send a message Or email hello@ridhidua.com directly. - [Insights](https://ridhidua.com/blog): Insights on search, data and AI I write about how search, data and AI work in practice, and I explain each idea in everyday terms before any jargon appears. You don’t need a technical background to follow along. Each article starts from a real situation and shows what is happening and what to do about it. Browse the latest below, or book a 30-minute call at no cost if you’d like to talk through a question of your own. See your world up there? Book a consultation - [Case studies](https://ridhidua.com/case-studies): Search, data and AI case studies Search that returns the wrong results. Data nobody trusts. An AI idea that has to work for the people who will actually use it. These are the problems clients bring me, and each case study here starts with the problem and shows how I approached it. I work with teams across sectors. Browse the work below and filter for your industry. If one looks like your situation, book a 30-minute call at no cost to talk it through. See your world up there? Book a consultation - [Solutions](https://ridhidua.com/solutions): Search, Data and AI Solutions Most teams come to me with a symptom: search that returns the wrong thing, numbers that disagree, a manual process nobody wants, or a system that breaks without warning. Each of the five solutions below fixes one family of those problems, and they work best together. Start with the one that matches your symptom: search and discovery, data engineering, applied AI and automation, data analytics and monitoring and risk. If you’re not sure which that is, book a 30-minute call and describe it. I’ll point you to the right one. Running OpenSearch or Elasticsearch? See OpenSearch…  - [Industries](https://ridhidua.com/industries): Industries I Work In The problems look different in each industry, but the cause is usually the same: information that exists and can’t be found, trusted or acted on. A shopper can’t find the product. A reviewer can’t find the clause. A team can’t find the signal in the noise. Below are the five industries I work in most, each described in the terms its own teams use. Pick yours to see the problems I fix and how. Don’t see your industry? Book a 30-minute call. E-Commerce & Marketplaces I help you understand your customers’ intent and help them find the…  - [About](https://ridhidua.com/about): About Ridhi Dua I am a technology leader with nearly 15 years of experience in the highly demanding investment banking sector. My career includes key roles at premier global financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. In my professional roles, I have built large technology systems that processed billions of global transactions daily, with one goal: finding the clients, conversations and transactions posing the greatest risk, the financial crimes that hide inside the noise of enormous data. Today, I work as an independent technology and AI consultant, helping businesses turn AI, data, and software investments into business insights…  - [Home](https://ridhidua.com/): Make your information work harder I’m a search, data and AI consultant. I fix the systems that make your information hard to find and act on. Book a consultation View my services E-commerce · Auto parts · Legal · Healthcare · Finance Previously at 15+ years building search and data systems I work with you to: Find the answer. Understand what it means. Act on it. Step What it does What it works on Find Get to the information that matters. Documents, Data Understand Turn information into intelligence. Knowledge, Customer behaviour Act Put intelligence to work. Business systems Better decisions. Better…  ## Optional - [Agent (MCP protocol)](websites-agents.hostinger.com/ridhidua.com/mcp) [comment]: # (Generated by Hostinger Tools Plugin)