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The Right Product,
Content & Action —
Every Time

Presear builds high-performance recommendation engines — collaborative filtering, content-based, hybrid models, and real-time personalisation — that drive engagement and revenue by surfacing exactly what each user needs, before they ask.

35%
Avg. Uplift in Click-Through Rate
<50ms
Recommendation Latency
65+
Rec Systems Live in Production
YOU PERSONALISED FOR YOU AI ENGINE

Core Techniques

How We Build Recommendation Intelligence

Six proven approaches — from classic matrix factorisation to knowledge graph-augmented models — that we deploy based on your data profile and scale requirements.

Collaborative Filtering & Matrix Factorisation

We decompose user-item interaction matrices using SVD, ALS, and neural collaborative filtering to discover latent preference factors. This approach excels at surfacing non-obvious items that similar users engaged with — driving serendipity at scale without requiring item metadata.

SVD / ALS Neural CF Implicit Feedback

Content-Based Filtering

We build rich item embeddings from structured metadata, unstructured text, images, and audio features — then match user preference profiles to the most semantically similar items. Particularly effective for new-item onboarding and domains with rich catalogue descriptions.

Item Embeddings TF-IDF / BERT Image Features

Hybrid & Ensemble Models

We combine collaborative and content signals through weighted blending, stacking, or learned mixing networks — capturing the strengths of both approaches while suppressing their individual weaknesses. Hybrid models consistently outperform single-source methods in production benchmarks.

Weighted Blending LightFM Two-Tower Models

Session-Based & Sequential Recommendations

We model user behaviour as an ordered sequence — using GRU4Rec, BERT4Rec, and SASRec architectures — to predict the next item based on the current session context. This approach is essential for anonymous users and high-velocity platforms where intent changes rapidly within a single visit.

BERT4Rec GRU4Rec Session Context

Contextual Bandits & Exploration

We implement Thompson Sampling, LinUCB, and neural bandit models that balance exploiting known preferences with exploring new items — continuously learning from real-time user feedback. This prevents filter bubbles, supports new item discovery, and directly optimises business metrics like revenue or watch time.

Thompson Sampling LinUCB Explore / Exploit

Knowledge Graph-Augmented Recommendations

We integrate structured knowledge graphs — product taxonomies, entity relationships, clinical ontologies — into recommendation models using KGCN, KGAT, and RippleNet. This enables semantic reasoning beyond interaction data alone, dramatically improving cold-start performance and cross-domain transfer.

KGAT / KGCN Entity Embeddings Graph Neural Networks

Our Delivery Process

From Raw Interactions to Real-Time Personalisation

A rigorous five-step process that transforms user behaviour data into deployed recommendation engines — with offline evaluation and A/B gating before every production release.

01
User & Item
Data Modelling
02
Feature
Engineering
03
Model Training &
Offline Evaluation
04
A/B Testing &
Online Evaluation
05
Real-Time Serving
& Personalisation
Step 01 of 05

User & Item Data Modelling

We audit every available signal — explicit ratings, implicit clicks, dwell time, purchases, search queries, and social signals — and construct comprehensive user and item entity models. Data freshness, sparsity, and interaction distribution are profiled to determine which algorithmic approach will perform best for your specific domain.

  • Multi-source interaction log ingestion and deduplication
  • User entity modelling: demographics, behaviour history, preferences
  • Item entity modelling: metadata, content features, catalogue taxonomy
  • Interaction sparsity analysis and cold-start risk assessment
Step 02 of 05

Feature Engineering

Raw interaction logs are transformed into dense representation vectors that capture both user intent and item semantics. We construct user embeddings from behavioural sequences, item embeddings from content and metadata, and context features — time of day, device, location, session intent — that modulate recommendations in real time.

  • Behavioural sequence encoding with learned temporal embeddings
  • Content embeddings: NLP for text, CNNs for image catalogues
  • Contextual feature construction: time, device, session state
  • Feature store integration for consistent train-serve consistency
Step 03 of 05

Model Training & Offline Evaluation

Multiple candidate architectures are trained — matrix factorisation baselines, sequential models, hybrid networks — and compared under rigorous temporal hold-out evaluation. We measure Precision@K, NDCG, MRR, and coverage to select the model that maximises engagement-relevant metrics, not just accuracy on historical data.

  • Temporal split evaluation to prevent data leakage
  • Precision@K, NDCG@K, MRR, and catalogue coverage metrics
  • Hyperparameter tuning via Bayesian optimisation
  • Full experiment tracking in MLflow with reproducible runs
Step 04 of 05

A/B Testing & Online Evaluation

No recommendation model goes to full production without online validation. We design statistically rigorous A/B experiments — with proper traffic allocation, guardrail metrics, and novelty effect controls — that measure real user engagement uplifts. Shadow mode deployment lets us observe candidate model behaviour safely before any traffic switches over.

  • Traffic splitting with stratified randomisation by user segment
  • Primary metrics: CTR, add-to-cart, conversion, watch completion
  • Guardrail metrics: diversity, novelty, serendipity — not just accuracy
  • Interleaving experiments for low-latency model comparison
Step 05 of 05

Real-Time Serving & Personalisation

We deploy recommendation models behind low-latency APIs — typically sub-50ms p99 — using ANN vector search for candidate retrieval and lightweight re-ranking models. Continuous ingestion of new interaction events keeps user profiles fresh, while automated retraining pipelines retrain the full model on configurable schedules, ensuring recommendations never go stale.

  • Two-stage architecture: ANN retrieval + ML re-ranking
  • Sub-50ms p99 latency via vector databases (Pinecone, Redis)
  • Real-time event streaming with Kafka for instant profile updates
  • Automated retraining and drift-triggered model refresh

Real-World Impact

Recommendation Problems We've Solved

Production recommendation engines across e-commerce, media, finance, and education — each delivering measurable engagement and revenue lift from day one.

E-Commerce Product Recommendations

Retail

Core Challenge

Online retailers with catalogues of millions of SKUs struggle to surface relevant products to each shopper — defaulting to bestseller lists that ignore individual intent. Most customers abandon without finding what they need, and cross-sell opportunities are systematically missed because the discovery surface is generic.

Who Benefits

E-commerce platforms, marketplace operators, and D2C brands seeking AI-driven product discovery — from homepage personalisation and similar-item widgets to checkout cross-sell and post-purchase next-purchase prediction.

Hybrid Filtering Two-Tower Model Session Context
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Video Content Personalisation

Media & Streaming

Core Challenge

Streaming platforms with thousands of titles see users churn when they cannot quickly find content matching their current mood and context. Generic trending-based surfaces drive short-term plays but reduce long-term retention — users leave when the platform feels like it doesn't know them.

Who Benefits

Video streaming platforms, OTT providers, and content networks that need personalised carousels, thumbnail optimisation, and watch-next predictions — across logged-in and anonymous users — to maximise completion rates and subscription retention.

Sequential Models Contextual Bandits Diversity Controls
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Financial Product Suggestions

Finance

Core Challenge

Banks and wealth platforms struggle to match complex financial products — investment funds, insurance policies, credit products — to each customer's risk profile, life stage, and financial goals. Generic one-size campaigns have low conversion, while over-personalisation raises compliance and mis-selling risks that require careful model governance.

Who Benefits

Retail banks, neo-banks, wealth management platforms, and insurance providers seeking compliant, explainable product recommendation engines that balance conversion optimisation with regulatory fairness requirements and responsible AI guardrails.

Knowledge Graph Recs Explainability Compliance Guardrails
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Learning Path Recommendations

EdTech

Core Challenge

Online learning platforms have vast course libraries but high learner drop-off — students fail to find content at the right difficulty level and relevant to their career goals. Generic course lists overwhelm learners and ignore prerequisite sequences, causing frustration and platform abandonment before learning objectives are achieved.

Who Benefits

EdTech platforms, corporate L&D systems, and professional certification providers that need personalised learning journey recommendations — mapping each learner's current skill gaps to the most effective next content step using knowledge graphs and mastery tracking.

Knowledge Graph Skill Embeddings Mastery Tracking
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Powered By

Our Recommendation Technology Ecosystem

Purpose-built frameworks, vector databases, and serving infrastructure — chosen for personalisation at scale with sub-50ms latency guarantees.

TF Recommenders Rec Framework
PyTorch Deep Learning
Surprise / LightFM Collaborative Filtering
Apache Spark Distributed Training
Redis Real-Time Cache
Pinecone Vector Database
Feast Feature Store
Kafka Event Streaming
FastAPI Serving Layer
Seldon Core Model Deployment
MLflow Experiment Tracking
Docker / K8s Infrastructure

Frequently Asked

Recommendation System Questions

Answers to the questions product leaders, data scientists, and engineering teams ask before building a recommendation system with Presear Softwares.

Ask Our Rec Systems Team
How do you handle the cold-start problem for new users and new items?
Cold-start is the central challenge in recommendation systems, and we address it differently for users and items. For new users, we use onboarding preference elicitation (explicit or implicit), demographic-based priors, and contextual bandit models that learn fast from early interactions. For new items, we leverage content-based features — text descriptions, image embeddings, structured attributes — so new catalogue additions receive meaningful recommendations immediately without requiring interaction history. Knowledge graph connections further boost new item visibility by linking them to semantically related established items.
How frequently are recommendations refreshed — and how do you keep them current?
Recommendation freshness operates on two levels. User profile updates can be near-real-time via event streaming — a click or purchase immediately influences the next page load. Full model retraining typically runs on a daily or weekly cadence, depending on data volume and interaction velocity. We instrument drift detection on recommendation quality metrics (CTR, diversity, novelty) so automated alerts trigger retraining when performance degrades rather than waiting for a fixed schedule. For high-velocity platforms like news or flash sales, we implement sub-minute profile refresh pipelines via Kafka and online learning components.
Can your recommendation systems scale to millions of items and users?
Yes — we design all recommendation architectures with scale as a first-class constraint. The standard production pattern is a two-stage system: a fast approximate nearest neighbour (ANN) retrieval layer that narrows millions of items to a candidate set of ~100–500 in under 10ms, followed by a more complex re-ranker that applies personalisation, business rules, and diversity controls to the candidate set. Vector databases like Pinecone or FAISS handle retrieval at scale. We have deployed systems serving hundreds of millions of user-item pairs with p99 latencies under 50ms.
What data do we need to get started — and how much is enough?
The minimum viable dataset depends on your domain. For collaborative filtering, we typically need at least 10,000–50,000 user-item interactions with reasonable user and item diversity. Content-based systems can work with far fewer interactions if you have rich item metadata (descriptions, categories, attributes). If you're at an early stage, we'll recommend starting with content-based approaches and adding collaborative signals as your interaction log grows. We always audit your data first and give you an honest assessment — including whether your current data is sufficient or whether a data collection phase is needed before model training begins.
How do you measure whether the recommendation system is actually working?
We evaluate on two dimensions: offline metrics and online business metrics — and we treat them as complementary, not interchangeable. Offline metrics (NDCG@K, Precision@K, MRR, catalogue coverage) are used to select and rank candidate models. Online metrics — click-through rate, add-to-cart, purchase conversion, watch completion, and return visit rate — are the true business signal measured through rigorous A/B experiments. We set up real-time dashboards tracking both dimensions, and define success criteria before launching any experiment so there's no ambiguity about what a winning model looks like.
Recommendation Systems

Ready to Personalise Every
User Interaction at Scale?

Partner with Presear Softwares to deploy recommendation engines that surface the right product, content, or action to every user — driving measurable uplift in engagement and revenue from day one.