Hi @thecashbag and @tayloryouno,
To complement those great links consider watching this video Data architecture design in Bubble.is made by channel NoLogo in YT.
Also, @josh (Bubble co-founder) guiding comments in a fair and honest chat about performance
In essence, my experience has been bulding indirect links when linked data is large. And direct links when data is small (less than a 100). When the build is all-around done for performance (avoiding excessive searching, filtering, long page loads, unneeded dB calcs, modular flows with adequete custom events, reusable elements, among others) searching work well, And lately, Bubble has felt pretty fast from where it was a few years ago I may add.
Hope this helps!