Google confirms MUVERA-style retrieval in Search - what it means for rankings

At Google’s Search Central Live Deep Dive Asia on 25 June 2024, Search Analyst Gary Illyes told attendees that Google already runs a production retrieval system “similar to MUVERA.” He added that, to his knowledge, Graph Foundation Models (GFM) are not yet part of Google Search. Illyes made the remarks during the live Q&A, which is summarized below and in a related LinkedIn post.

Google confirms MUVERA-like retrieval in Search

Illyes briefly joked about the MUVERA name before confirming that Google’s search stack uses a comparable approach under a different internal label. He did not share rollout dates or specify which Search features rely on the method.

Key details from the event

• Venue: Search Central Live Deep Dive Asia, streamed 25 June 2024
• Speaker: Gary Illyes, Analyst, Google
• Statement: Google employs a MUVERA-style retrieval technique in production
• Naming: The internal system has a different name
• Follow-up: No timeline or product list provided

How MUVERA works

Google Research introduced Multi-Vector Retrieval via Fixed-Dimensional Encodings (MUVERA) on 11 June 2024. The technique compresses sets of token embeddings into single fixed-length vectors, enabling fast Maximum Inner Product Search. A secondary Chamfer similarity stage re-ranks the results, regaining multi-vector accuracy while using less compute than the PLAID baseline.

In internal tests, MUVERA achieved higher recall with fewer retrieved documents. Full details are available in the Google Research MUVERA announcement.

Graph Foundation Models remain experimental

When asked whether Graph Foundation Models power Search, Illyes said he believed they were “not in production” and noted he does not review every research post. Google unveiled GFM on 6 June 2024 as an architecture that converts relational tables into graphs and learns general patterns across them. Early internal tests showed three- to forty-fold precision gains in certain ad-spam tasks, but Google has not announced broader use. See the Google Research GFM announcement for technical specifics.

Source citations

• Search Central Live Deep Dive Asia, Q&A session, 25 June 2024
• Google Research. “MUVERA: Multi-Vector Retrieval via Fixed-Dimensional Encodings,” 11 June 2024
• Google Research. “Graph Foundation Models: Unlocking Graph-Based Learning for Relational Databases,” 6 June 2024