(I'm VP of Engineering at Algolia) Be sure I'm the first one hating marketing bullshit. Our team of 6 is composed by 5 engineers: we're developers/geeks/tech gu

(I'm VP of Engineering at Algolia) Be sure I'm the first one hating marketing bullshit. Our team of 6 is composed by 5 engineers: we're developers/geeks/tech guys too :) When we speak about "database search" it has actually nothing to deal with "facet search". The 2 main differences of our engine comparing to "traditional/document search engine" is the way the ranking is working and the way we provide instant-search capabilities (not just "suggest" in a separated data structure like what you could have with ES/Solr, but real queries): we call that "database/record search". You may be interested by a blog post we wrote a few weeks ago describing our secret sauce: http://blog.algolia.com/search-ranking-algorithm-unveiled/ http://blog.algolia.com/search-ranking-algorithm-unveiled/. If you need more details, I'll be happy to chat (feel free to reach me at sylvain at algolia)