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When you actually need it
Under roughly 10,000 simple products, the database is fine and Elasticsearch is a second system to operate for nothing. Above that — or with heavy faceting, synonyms and typo tolerance — search becomes the slowest page in the shop, and that is when it pays.
B2B search is not B2C search
Your buyers search by article number, manufacturer part number, EAN and internal codes — not by lifestyle adjectives. Weight those fields hard, make exact matches beat fuzzy ones, and never let a fuzzy match outrank an exact SKU.
Synonyms are a business asset
Your customers call it a 'grub screw', your catalogue says 'set screw'. A synonym list built from your real zero-result search log is one of the highest-ROI hours you will ever spend on the shop.
Reindexing is the operational cost
Every price or stock change must reach the index, and a full reindex of a large catalogue is not instant. Plan for incremental updates via queue and accept that the index is eventually consistent — then never show stock from it.
- Below 10k simple products, stay with the database.
- Exact SKU must always beat fuzzy matches.
- Mine your zero-result log for synonyms.
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