As the title states, the AUGI Forums Search facility now uses MySQL Full Text Search instead of the standard vBulletin search facility.
  • Minimum word (character) search length = 3
  • Maximum word (character) search length = 84

MySQL Full Text Search Boolean operators:

  • + A leading plus sign indicates that this word must be present in each row that is returned.
  • - A leading minus sign indicates that this word must not be present in any of the rows that are returned.
  • (no wild card) By default (when neither + nor - is specified) the word is optional, but the rows that contain it are rated higher.
  • > < These two operators are used to change a word's contribution to the relevance value that is assigned to a row. The > operator increases the contribution and the < operator decreases it.
  • ( ) Parentheses are used to group words into subexpressions. Parenthesized groups can be nested.
  • ~ A leading tilde acts as a negation operator, causing the word's contribution to the row's relevance to be negative. This is useful for marking “noise” words. A row containing such a word is rated lower than others, but is not excluded altogether, as it would be with the - operator.
  • * The asterisk serves as the truncation operator. Unlike the other operators, it should be appended to the word to be affected. Words match if they begin with the word preceding the * operator.
  • " A phrase that is enclosed within double quote (“"”) characters matches only rows that contain the phrase literally, as it was typed.

Examples:
  • 'apple banana' Find rows that contain at least one of the two words.
  • '+apple +juice' Find rows that contain both words.
  • '+apple macintosh' Find rows that contain the word “apple”, but rank rows higher if they also contain “macintosh”.
  • '+apple -macintosh' Find rows that contain the word “apple” but not “macintosh”.
  • '+apple ~macintosh' Find rows that contain the word “apple”, but if the row also contains the word “macintosh”, rate it lower than if row does not. This is “softer” than a search for '+apple -macintosh', for which the presence of “macintosh” causes the row not to be returned at all.
  • '+apple +(>turnover <strudel)' Find rows that contain the words “apple” and “turnover”, or “apple” and “strudel” (in any order), but rank “apple turnover” higher than “apple strudel”.
  • 'apple*' Find rows that contain words such as “apple”, “apples”, “applesauce”, or “applet”.
  • '"some words"' Find rows that contain the exact phrase “some words” (for example, rows that contain “some words of wisdom” but not “some noise words”). Note that the “"” characters that surround the phrase are operator characters that delimit the phrase. They are not the quotes that surround the search string itself.

Words are ignored:
  • Any word that is too short (Minimum word search length) is ignored.
  • Common words such as “some” or “then” are stopwords and do not match if present in the search string.

Source and additional information: 10.8. Full-Text Search Functions and vB search or MySQL Fulltext search?

Example alternative search methods:

Mike