Stop Words

MySQL ignores common words (stop words) like "the", "is", "a" in full-text searches. View the default list or customize it in the server configuration.

Example

-- View default InnoDB stop words
SELECT * FROM information_schema.INNODB_FT_DEFAULT_STOPWORD;

-- Custom stop word table (my.cnf)
-- innodb_ft_server_stopword_table = mydb/my_stopwords
-- Then reload: ALTER TABLE articles DROP INDEX idx_search;
--              ALTER TABLE articles ADD FULLTEXT idx_search(title, body);

SQL

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Pro Tip

After changing stop words, rebuild all full-text indexes for changes to take effect.

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