document indexing

Document indexing transforms unstructured data into a high-speed searchable catalog using metadata tags and inverted indexes.

Indexing is the engine behind sub-second retrieval in systems like Elasticsearch and Amazon Kendra. It maps specific terms to their exact locations across millions of PDFs, spreadsheets, and HTML files (the inverted index method). By extracting entities like dates, names, or SKU numbers, the system bypasses slow linear scans in favor of direct pointer lookups. This process reduces search latency from minutes to milliseconds, ensuring that a repository of 100 terabytes remains as navigable as a single page.

https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/indexing/