Search is a Team Sport
Source: https://medium.com/search-in-21st-century/search-is-a-team-sport-400eecdfe736
Summary
Argues that effective search improvement requires collaboration across engineering, product, data science, UX, and business stakeholders — no single discipline owns search quality.
Core Argument
Search quality is multidimensional:
- Engineering can optimize ranking signals
- Data scientists can build evaluation metrics
- UX researchers can surface user intent gaps
- Product managers can set business priorities
Each discipline sees part of the picture; none sees all of it. Search improvement happens at the intersections.
Implications for Team Structure
- Cross-functional accountability (not just “the search team”)
- Shared vocabulary across roles — what does “relevant” mean to a PM vs. an ML engineer?
- Regular cross-functional touchpoints (see Query Triage - The Secret Weapon for Search Relevance)