When Cosine and Dot Product Are Not Enough: Real Stories of Vector Search with Euclidean…

📰 Medium · Data Science

Learn when to use alternative distance metrics like Euclidean, Manhattan, Hamming, Jaccard, and BM25 for vector search, and how to choose the right one for your product

intermediate Published 19 Apr 2026
Action Steps
  1. Choose a distance metric based on the specific requirements of your vector search project, considering factors like data type and distribution
  2. Implement Euclidean distance for continuous data and Manhattan distance for sparse data
  3. Use Hamming distance for categorical data and Jaccard similarity for set-based data
  4. Experiment with BM25 for text-based data and evaluate its performance against other metrics
  5. Evaluate and compare the performance of different distance metrics on your dataset to select the best one
Who Needs to Know This

Data scientists and engineers working on vector search and machine learning projects can benefit from understanding the limitations of cosine and dot product similarity metrics and how to apply alternative distance metrics to improve their models

Key Insight

💡 The choice of distance metric can significantly impact the performance of a vector search model, and alternative metrics like Euclidean, Manhattan, and BM25 can outperform cosine and dot product in certain scenarios

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Did you know that cosine and dot product similarity metrics aren't always enough? Learn about alternative distance metrics like Euclidean, Manhattan, and BM25 for vector search #VectorSearch #MachineLearning
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