Tengence vs. In-House Search Team: A Full Cost and Effectiveness Comparison
Build or buy search? In-house needs 6-8 people and 10-15 months to launch, plus 0.5-1.0 FTE. Compare Tengence Search SaaS on cost, timeline, and results.
Sep 20, 2026
Build or buy search? In-house needs 6-8 people and 10-15 months to launch, plus 0.5-1.0 FTE. Compare Tengence Search SaaS on cost, timeline, and results.
Search relevance problems split into recall vs. ranking failures: offline replay, multi-path recall, two-stage ranking, Learning to Rank, and a 3-phase rollout.
Do not merge search and recommendation. Share the data and recall base, split ranking and strategy, then roll out in four phases with clear engineering metrics.
Semantic search matches meaning with vectors, keyword search matches wording. See how each works, where each fails, and why hybrid search is the default.
Cut site-search zero-results rate below 2% in eight weeks: rank queries by frequency, then close synonym, spelling, and index gaps with eight strategies.
WeCom