# ADORE: Iterative Query Expansion with Retrieval-Grounded Relevance Feedback

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.13905 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.13905/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 23 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Jun 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [Dense Passage Retrieval for Open-Domain Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04906/) (2020)
- [BEIR: A Heterogenous Benchmark for Zero-shot Evaluation of Information Retrieval Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08663/) (2021)
- [Unsupervised Dense Information Retrieval with Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09118/) (2021)
- [Approximate Nearest Neighbor Negative Contrastive Learning for Dense Text Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.00808/) (2020)
- [Towards General Text Embeddings with Multi-stage Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03281/) (2023)
- [C-Pack: Packed Resources For General Chinese Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07597/) (2023)
- [Precise Zero-Shot Dense Retrieval without Relevance Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10496/) (2022)
- [Overview of the TREC 2019 deep learning track](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.07820/) (2020)
- [Overview of the TREC 2020 deep learning track](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.07662/) (2021)
- [RankZephyr: Effective and Robust Zero-Shot Listwise Reranking is a Breeze!](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02724/) (2023)
- [Large language models can accurately predict searcher preferences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.10621/) (2023)
- [Perspectives on Large Language Models for Relevance Judgment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.09161/) (2023)
- [ReasonIR: Training Retrievers for Reasoning Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.20595/) (2025)
- [UMBRELA: UMbrela is the (Open-Source Reproduction of the) Bing RELevance Assessor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06519/) (2024)
- [One-Shot Labeling for Automatic Relevance Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.11266/) (2023)
- [LLM-based relevance assessment still can't replace human relevance assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17156/) (2024)
- [Generative Query Reformulation for Effective Adhoc Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.00415/) (2023)
- [GenQREnsemble: Zero-Shot LLM Ensemble Prompting for Generative Query Reformulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03746/) (2024)
- [Synthetic Test Collections for Retrieval Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07767/) (2024)
- [How Deep is your Learning: the DL-HARD Annotated Deep Learning Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.07975/) (2021)
- [ThinkQE: Query Expansion via an Evolving Thinking Process](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09260/) (2025)
- [QueryGym: A Toolkit for Reproducible LLM-Based Query Reformulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.15996/) (2025)
- [A Reproducibility Study of LLM-Based Query Reformulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.27421/) (2026)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Autoregressive Retriever: Improving Query Understanding from Item Feedback for Universal Multimodal Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.11666/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

LLM-based query expansion improves retrieval by enriching the original query with additional context. Yet most methods remain generation-driven, producing plausible pseudo-documents or expansions without checking how the target corpus responds. This can introduce retrieval drift, amplify misleading vocabulary, or miss terms that distinguish relevant from non-relevant documents. We argue that effective expansion requires retrieval-grounded feedback, not just single-pass generation or unverified iteration. We introduce ADORE (ADapt, Observe, Relevance Evaluate), an iterative framework that turns retrieval outcomes into feedback for the next expansion. At each round, an LLM generates pseudo-passages, a retriever exposes the corpus response, and a relevance assessor evaluates retrieved documents against the original query. These judgments identify what to reinforce, what remains undercovered, and what to suppress. Across TREC Deep Learning, BEIR, and BRIGHT, ADORE consistently outperforms strong query expansion baselines with notable improvements across nearly all evaluation settings, improving average nDCG@10 by 24.5% over BM25 and 3.6% over the strongest prior query expansion method on BEIR, and by 122.9% over BM25 and 9.2% over the best query expansion baseline on BRIGHT. Our code and data are publicly available.