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Answer Relevance

Reviewed 19 July 2026 Canonical definition Part of: Agent Evaluation Terms →

Answer relevance is an evaluation metric that measures how directly an AI agent's response addresses the user's actual question or task. A response that is factually accurate but off-topic scores low on relevance. It is typically assessed by comparing the response to the original query rather than to a source document.

§01 / QUESTIONSterm: Answer Relevance
Questions

Common questions.

What is Answer Relevance?

Answer relevance is an evaluation metric that measures how directly an AI agent's response addresses the user's actual question or task.

How is Answer Relevance used in production?

A response that is factually accurate but off-topic scores low on relevance. It is typically assessed by comparing the response to the original query rather than to a source document.

Which terms are related to Answer Relevance?

Closely related concepts include Answer Faithfulness, Context Precision, Ground Truth Evaluation, Groundedness. Each is defined in the Prefactor glossary.

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