Learning to Trust: Dynamic Utilization of Retrieval-Augmented Generation for E-commerce Search Relevance

Abstract

Accurately estimating query-item relevance is vital for e-commerce ranking and conversion. While Large Language Models (LLMs) excel at reasoning, they often lack specialized knowledge required for long-tail or fast-evolving queries, necessitating Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). However, production environments face three critical challenges: (1) external context is inherently noisy and inconsistent; (2) extreme latency budgets prohibit multi-stage processing or refinement; and (3) the model must simultaneously assess relevance and context-trust within a unified inference pass. We propose DyKnow-RAG, a reinforcement learning framework that teaches LLMs to learn to trust through dynamic utilization of external knowledge. Built on Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), DyKnow-RAG utilizes a dual-group rollout strategy (parametric-only vs. with-context) and a posterior-driven inter-group advantage scaling mechanism. This enables the model to optimize context utilization without human process labels or extra inference overhead. Our pipeline further integrates structured Chain-of-Thought (CoT) and an uncertainty-prioritized RL pool to stabilize training.Offline evaluations show significant Macro-F1 and Accuracy gains, particularly on noise-sensitive query slices. Importantly, DyKnow-RAG has been deployed in Taobao's production system, serving hundreds of millions of active users and billions of daily search requests. Controlled A/B tests demonstrate consistent lifts in key business metrics, including GSB and Item Goodrate, while maintaining a p99 latency under 400ms. This work provides a scalable and deployable paradigm for operationalizing noisy RAG under extreme efficiency constraints of large-scale industrial search.