Building website search means assembling six components: content ingestion, an index, query understanding, retrieval, ranking, and a front end. A basic keyword implementation takes days; a hybrid system with intent routing, analytics and merchandising is a months-long project with permanent maintenance.
| Component | Job | Common choice |
|---|---|---|
| Ingestion | Get content in and keep it fresh | Webhooks or scheduled sync |
| Index | Store for fast retrieval | Typesense, Meilisearch, Elasticsearch |
| Query understanding | Correct, expand, classify | Rules plus a model |
| Retrieval | Find candidates | BM25 and/or vectors |
| Ranking | Order them | Score blend plus re-ranker |
| Front end | Bar, suggestions, results, facets | Custom UI |
Start with keyword search over one content type, with logging from the very first day. Add typo tolerance and synonyms — the largest recovery for the least work. Add facets. Add semantic retrieval and fuse. Add intent routing for non-product queries. Add merchandising last, once the log tells you which queries deserve it.
Not the initial build — the operations. Index freshness, synonym upkeep, relevance regressions after catalogue changes, ranking tuning, analytics plumbing and the front end's long tail of interaction detail are all permanent. Teams that build search usually discover that the engine was the easy part.