--- title: What’s The Story With HNSW? | daily.dev description: HNSW is an effective approach for approximate nearest neighbor search. It uses small world graphs that connect local points and have short paths between... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-the-story-with-hnsw--lfwflv48i twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: What’s The Story With HNSW? | daily.dev og:description: HNSW is an effective approach for approximate nearest neighbor search. It uses small world graphs that connect local points and have short paths between... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-the-story-with-hnsw--lfwflv48i og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/LfWflV48I.png og:image:alt: What’s The Story With HNSW? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # What’s The Story With HNSW? **[Towards Data Science](https://daily.dev/sources/tds)** · 8 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary HNSW is an effective approach for approximate nearest neighbor search. It uses small world graphs that connect local points and have short paths between distant points. HNSW improves upon NSW by using long-range hubs as entry points, limiting the number of connections checked at each hub, and introducing a hierarchy of layers with different connection lengths. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: --- Tags: [#algorithms](https://daily.dev/tags/algorithms), [#data-structures](https://daily.dev/tags/data-structures), [#graph-theory](https://daily.dev/tags/graph-theory), [#machine-learning](https://daily.dev/tags/machine-learning) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-the-story-with-hnsw--lfwflv48i) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"What’s The Story With HNSW?","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-the-story-with-hnsw--lfwflv48i","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-the-story-with-hnsw--lfwflv48i"},"datePublished":"2024-02-25T20:29:55.114Z","dateModified":"2025-09-06T02:49:06.703Z","description":"HNSW is an effective approach for approximate nearest neighbor search. It uses small world graphs that connect local points and have short paths between...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/f921272e02c98805e371d89f25b813cd?_a=AQAEufR","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/f921272e02c98805e371d89f25b813cd?_a=AQAEufR","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Towards Data Science","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Towards Data Science","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/tds","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/tds"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-s-the-story-with-hnsw--lfwflv48i","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"algorithms,data-structures,graph-theory,machine-learning","timeRequired":"PT8M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Towards Data Science","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/tds"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"What’s The Story With HNSW?"}]} ```