How would you architect a scalable search engine that can index billions of documents?

Very hard Difficulty

Very-hard questions are the ultimate test of your expertise and preparation. They demand not just knowledge, but creativity and strategic thinking, often addressing unique or highly technical aspects of your field.

System Design question

System Design questions evaluate your ability to architect complex software solutions. Demonstrate your approach to requirements analysis, component design, scalability considerations, and how you make architectural trade-offs.

Here's a Hint

Break down your solution into core components: crawling, indexing, ranking, and serving, while addressing sharding, fault tolerance, and caching strategies.