As applied to a vector quantization (VQ) codebook search, a combined version of a dynamic triangular inequality elimination (DTIE) and a tree‐structured VQ (TSVQ) algorithm, designated as the DTIE–TSVQ approach, is presented in this letter as an efficient way to reach the aim of search performance improvement by successive updating of the search scope and reduced search load through the DTIE algorithm. In this manner, this proposal features the combined advantages of a TIE and a TSVQ algorithm such that 100% search accuracy is rendered together with a remarkable reduction in computational load. At the end of this work, this proposal is validated as a superior algorithm over TIE and conventional TSVQ algorithms by a high computational load saving up to 97.45% when dealing with line spectral frequency (LSF) quantization in a G.729 speech codec and image VQ encodings. © 2014 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.