In what scenarios would using Elasticsearch be more beneficial than implementing a custom search function using PHP?

Using Elasticsearch would be more beneficial than implementing a custom search function using PHP in scenarios where you need to handle large amounts of data, require real-time search capabilities, need advanced search features like fuzzy matching, relevance scoring, and aggregations, and want to scale your search functionality easily.

// Example PHP code snippet using Elasticsearch for search functionality

require 'vendor/autoload.php';

use Elasticsearch\ClientBuilder;

$client = ClientBuilder::create()->build();

$params = [
    'index' => 'my_index',
    'type' => 'my_type',
    'body' => [
        'query' => [
            'match' => [
                'field' => 'search_query'
            ]
        ]
    ]
];

$response = $client->search($params);

print_r($response);