In one embodiment, a method includes receiving, from a client system associated with a user of an online social network, a search query for entities in the online social network, the search query containing one or more n-grams, generating a query embedding corresponding to the search query, where the query embedding represents the search query as a point in a d-dimensional embedding space, retrieving multiple entity embeddings corresponding to a plurality of entities, respectively, where each entity embedding represents the corresponding entity as a point in the d-dimensional embedding space, calculating, for each of the retrieved entity embeddings, a similarity metric between the query embedding and the entity embedding, ranking the entities based on their respective calculated similarity metrics, and sending, to the client system in response to the search query, instructions for presenting a search-results interface.