Category:
Category:
Retrieval Failures
Category:
Retrieval & RAG
Definition
Situations where RAG returns irrelevant, missing, or incomplete results.
Explanation
Retrieval failures occur when embeddings, chunking, vector search, or reranking fail to deliver relevant context. These failures directly cause hallucinations, incorrect outputs, or overly generic answers. Enterprises must detect retrieval failures and fall back to alternative strategies like keyword search, hybrid retrieval, or verification layers.
Technical Architecture
Query → Retrieval Stack → Failure Detector → Retry / Alternative Retrieval → LLM
Core Component
Failure detector, query rewriting, hybrid retrieval fallback, ranking debug tools
Use Cases
Knowledge assistants, customer support, research workflows
Pitfalls
Undetected retrieval errors silently degrade output quality
LLM Keywords
RAG Retrieval Failure, Semantic Search Failure
Related Concepts
Related Frameworks
• RAG
• Hybrid Retrieval
• Reranking
• Retrieval Debugging Pipeline