The original version of GraphRAG was inefficient because it processed all community reports, including irrelevant lower-level summaries, regardless of their relevance to the search query. Microsoft describes this as a “static” approach since it lacks dynamic filtering.
The updated GraphRAG introduces “dynamic community selection,” which evaluates the relevance of each community report. Irrelevant reports and their sub-communities are removed, improving efficiency and precision by focusing only on relevant information.
Microsoft explains:
“Here, we introduce dynamic community selection to the global search algorithm, which leverages the knowledge graph structure of the indexed dataset. Starting from the root of the knowledge graph, we use an LLM to rate how relevant a community report is in answering the user question. If the report is deemed irrelevant, we simply remove it and its nodes (or sub-communities) from the search process. On the other hand, if the report is deemed relevant, we then traverse down its child nodes and repeat the operation. Finally, only relevant reports are passed to the map-reduce operation to generate the response to the user. “
Takeaways: Results Of Updated GraphRAG
Microsoft tested the new version of GraphRAG and concluded that it resulted in a 77% reduction in computational costs, specifically the token cost when processed by the LLM. Tokens are the basic units of text that are processed by LLMs. The improved GraphRAG is able to use a smaller LLM, further reducing costs without compromising the quality of the results.
The positive impacts on search results quality are:
Dynamic search provides responses that are more specific information.
Responses makes more references to source material, which improves the credibility of the responses.
Results are more comprehensive and specific to the user’s query, which helps to avoid offering too much information.
Dynamic community selection in GraphRAG improves search results quality by generating responses that are more specific, relevant, and supported by source material.
Read Microsoft’s announcement:
GraphRAG: Improving global search via dynamic community selection
Featured Image by Shutterstock/N Universe