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Google Cloud BlogDarshana Sivakumar2 min readintermediate

Announcing Native BM25 Ranking in AlloyDB and Cloud SQL

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Summary

Google Cloud adds native BM25 ranking to AlloyDB and Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 17+) via the open‑source pg_textsearch extension, letting you run keyword‑based full‑text search inside the database. This removes the need for a separate search backend and, on AlloyDB, speeds up vector queries up to 10×.

  • Native BM25 ranking is now available in AlloyDB and Cloud SQL through the pg_textsearch extension.
  • Eliminates separate full‑text search systems, removing data duplication and sync lag.
  • Provides C‑optimized BM25 scoring with inverse document frequency and term‑frequency saturation.
  • AlloyDB can execute vector searches 6×–10× faster using ScaNN or HNSW indexes versus standard PostgreSQL.

Engineers building RAG or hybrid search pipelines with PostgreSQL should care because it simplifies architecture and improves performance.

5/10
databasespostgresqlhybrid searchbm25alloydbcloud sql

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