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Multimodal Search for E-commerce: Image + Text + Attributes | ML Knowledge Hub

Multimodal search leverages both images and text to help shoppers find exactly what they’re looking for in e-commerce.

mysimulator teamUpdated June 2026≈ 3 min read▶ Open the simulation

Multimodal Search for E-Commerce

Combine images, text, and attributes to find precise products, boosting conversion rates and user experience.

Multimodal search integrates visual and textual signals with product catalog attributes, reducing irrelevant results and improving relevance even when users have vague queries or just a photo.

Search by Photo/Screenshot + Refine with Text/Filters

Embeddings for style/shape/material.

Decompose the query into attributes (color, brand, style).

live demo · related simulation● LIVE

Vectorization of Text/Images; Cross-Modal Indexes

Tracking search/click events; PII minimization.

Dual encoder for text/image; late fusion.

Frequently asked questions

What are dashboards used for in multimodal search?

Dashboards track metrics like zero-result rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and latency to monitor performance.

How is the product catalog vectorized (text + images)?

The product catalog is vectorized by normalizing attributes; this allows for efficient similarity comparisons between products based on their textual descriptions and visual features.

How do you build a multimodal retrieval system?

Building a multimodal retrieval system involves combining initial retrieval with a basic reranking step to improve the quality of results.

What are behavior-based re-rankers, deduplication, and explainability in this context?

Behavior-based re-rankers utilize user interaction data (clicks, purchases) to refine search results. Deduplication removes redundant products from the ranked list, while explainability provides users with insights into why a particular product was recommended.

Try it live

Everything above runs in your browser — open Hash Function Avalanche Visualizer and change the parameters while it is running. Nothing is installed, nothing is uploaded, the whole model lives in one tab.

▶ Open Hash Function Avalanche Visualizer simulation

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