Embedding-based retrieval (EBR) is foundational to large-scale e-commerce search, yet its effectiveness is often constrained by the quality of training signals and the representational capacity of the encoder. Standard dual-encoders suffer from a training-inference gap: they are optimized on narrow candidate pools but must discriminate against hundreds of millions of items during inference. Furthermore, while transitioning to higher-capacity backbones can mitigate this gap, simply replacing a mature model can lead to inconsistent retrieval behavior and a loss of the domain-specific knowledge established in previous iterations. In this paper, we present a unified pipeline deployed at Walmart that addresses both signal quality and model evolution. Our contributions are two-fold: (1) Hybrid Hard Negative Mining: We integrate Online Cross-Batch Sampling to increase negative diversity by an order of magnitude and Hybrid Offline Mining, which combines cross-encoder predictions with metadata heuristics to identify nuanced mismatches. (2) Legacy-Aware Distillation: We transition from DistilBERT to a higher-capacity GTE-base encoder. To ensure a smooth and superior transition, we introduce a Warm-Start Distillation technique that transfers domain-specific expertise from the legacy model to the new backbone. Validated through extensive offline experiments and online A/B testing, the proposed pipeline is deployed in live production, delivering a +7.34% improvement in NDCG@5 and a +0.50% lift in gross revenue.

Embedding-based neural retrieval (EBR) is an effective search retrieval method in product search for tackling the vocabulary gap between customer search queries and products. The initial launch of our EBR system at Walmart yielded significant gains in relevance and add-to-cart rates [1]. However, despite EBR generally retrieving more relevant products for reranking, we have observed numerous instances of relevance degradation. Enhancing retrieval performance is crucial, as it directly influences product reranking and affects the customer shopping experience. Factors contributing to these degradations include false positives/negatives in the training data and the inability to handle query misspellings. To address these issues, we present several approaches to further strengthen the capabilities of our EBR model in terms of retrieval relevance. We introduce a Relevance Reward Model (RRM) based on human relevance feedback. We utilize RRM to remove noise from the training data and distill it into our EBR model through a multi-objective loss. In addition, we present the techniques to increase the performance of our EBR model, such as typo-aware training, and semi-positive generation. The effectiveness of our EBR is demonstrated through offline relevance evaluation, online AB tests, and successful deployments to live production.

We present a novel strategy for analyzing E-Com search logs called Differential Query Semantic Analysis (DQSA) to discover explicit interpretable knowledge from search logs in the form of a semantic lexicon that makes context-specific mapping from a query segment (word or phrase) to the preferred attribute values of a product. Evaluation on a set of size-related query segments and attribute values shows that DQSA can effectively discover meaningful mappings of size-related query segments to their preferred specific attributes and attributes values in the context of a product type. DQSA has many uses including improvement of E-Com search accuracy by bridging the vocabulary gap, comparative analysis of search intent, and alleviation of the problem of tail queries and products.