# Basic Semantic Search or Semantic Search with ELSER
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/basic-semantic-search-or-semantic-search-with-elser/353845
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [February 22, 2024, 5:53am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/basic-semantic-search-or-semantic-search-with-elser/353845 "2024-02-22T05:53:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@9d224d4833094bd482cf](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/9d224d4833094bd482cf)
#### Post date: [February 22, 2024, 5:53am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/basic-semantic-search-or-semantic-search-with-elser/353845/1 "2024-02-22T05:53:44Z")
I want to understand difference between
Creating simple vector search by importing model (may be from hugging face)
versus
Using ELSER
Any guidelines or recommendations on choosing approach? What are the use cases for each approaches? What are limitations for each approaches?
---
### Author:  [@Priscilla\_Parodi](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Priscilla_Parodi)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2024, 11:29pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/basic-semantic-search-or-semantic-search-with-elser/353845/2 "2024-03-18T23:29:47Z")
Hello @9d224d4833094bd482cf,
ELSER is an out-of-domain model trained by Elastic that enables you to perform semantic search (search based on the intent and contextual meaning of a search query).
It expands the searched passages into collections of terms, and these expanded terms are weighted as some of them are more significant than others (learned associations capturing relevance).
It's a more understandable search experience compared to [dense vectors](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/8.12/dense-vector.html).
[This blog post](https://www.elastic.co/search-labs/blog/articles/may-2023-launch-information-retrieval-elasticsearch-ai-model) talks about learned sparse models and if you want more details and examples, you can check:
> **[Semantic search | Elasticsearch Guide \[8.12\] | Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/semantic-search.html)**
> **[Lexical and Semantic Search with Elasticsearch — Elastic Search Labs](https://www.elastic.co/search-labs/blog/articles/lexical-and-semantic-search-with-elasticsearch#semantic-search---dense-retrieval)**
>
> In this blog post, you will explore various approaches to retrieving information using Elasticsearch, focusing specifically on text: lexical and semantic search.
Note: ELSER is recommended for English language documents and queries.
> **[Limitations | Machine Learning in the Elastic Stack \[8.12\] | Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/machine-learning/8.12/ml-nlp-limitations.html)**
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2024, 11:29pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/basic-semantic-search-or-semantic-search-with-elser/353845/3 "2024-04-15T23:29:48Z")
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