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title: Linear Combination Reranker in LanceDB | Score-Based Search Optimization description: Learn about LanceDB's deprecated Linear Combination Reranker for combining semantic and full-text search scores. Note: RRFReranker is recommended for score-based reranking.

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Linear Combination Reranker in LanceDB

Note

This is deprecated. It is recommended to use the RRFReranker instead, if you want to use a score-based reranker.

The Linear Combination Reranker combines the results of semantic and full-text search using a linear combination of the scores. The weights for the linear combination can be specified, and defaults to 0.7, i.e, 70% weight for semantic search and 30% weight for full-text search.

Note

Supported Query Types: Hybrid

import numpy
import lancedb
from lancedb.embeddings import get_registry
from lancedb.pydantic import LanceModel, Vector
from lancedb.rerankers import LinearCombinationReranker

embedder = get_registry().get("sentence-transformers").create()
db = lancedb.connect("~/.lancedb")

class Schema(LanceModel):
    text: str = embedder.SourceField()
    vector: Vector(embedder.ndims()) = embedder.VectorField()

data = [
    {"text": "hello world"},
    {"text": "goodbye world"}
    ]
tbl = db.create_table("test", schema=Schema, mode="overwrite")
tbl.add(data)
reranker = LinearCombinationReranker()

# Run hybrid search with a reranker
tbl.create_fts_index("text", replace=True)
result = tbl.search("hello", query_type="hybrid").rerank(reranker=reranker).to_list()

Accepted Arguments

Argument	Type	Default	Description
weight	float	0.7	The weight to use for the semantic search score. The weight for the full-text search score is 1 - weights.
return_score	str	"relevance"	Options are "relevance" or "all". The type of score to return. If "relevance", will return only the `_relevance_score. If "all", will return all scores from the vector and FTS search along with the relevance score.

Supported Scores for each query type

You can specify the type of scores you want the reranker to return. The following are the supported scores for each query type:

Hybrid Search

return_score	Status	Description
relevance	✅ Supported	Results only have the _relevance_score column
all	✅ Supported	Results have vector(_distance) and FTS(score) along with Hybrid Search score(_distance)