Elasticsearch is often described as an open-source, scalable, full-text search and analytics engine. This is true, but this sentence doesn’t really tell you much about what developers actuallydo with it.

Many people who hear “search engine” may have preconceptions about what developers use them for, thanks to the strong correlation with services like Google, Bing, or Duck Duck Go. To be fair, the full-text search of Elasticsearch can get you similar, but far less sophisticated, results as something like Google but that’s only part of the picture.

Because of the nature of the underlying technology and the focus on horizontal scalability, Elasticsearch is also a fantastic analytics tool. “Analytics” is vague term though, so I wanted to list out 4 common use cases for Elasticsearch that are hopefully more relatable.

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