Methods and systems for keyword spotting, i.e., for identifying textual phrases of interest in input data. The input data may be communication packets exchanged in a communication network. A keyword spotting system holds a dictionary (or dictionaries) of textual phrases for searching input data. The input data and the patterns are assigned to multiple different pattern matching algorithms. For example, a share of the traffic is handled by one algorithm and smaller traffic shares may be handled by the others. The system monitors the algorithms performance as they process the data to search for a match. The ratio of traffic splitting among the algorithms is dynamically reassigned or adjusted to maximize the overall performance.