SQL Server 2005 - FREETEXTTABLE ignoring single characters

Question

I have an issue with a query I'm running. Basically it's a search on a table of books. This query below uses the FREETEXTTABLE command to rank the search for an author:

@author = 'lewis c s'

SELECT *
FROM tbl_products
INNER JOIN FREETEXTTABLE(tbl_products, [author], @author, LANGUAGE 'British English') AS key_tbl ON tbl_products.product_id = key_tbl.[key]
WHERE deleted = 0
ORDER BY key_tbl.[rank] DESC, author ASC, title ASC, stl_product_id ASC

The results I get are confusing...the top row returned is by an author called lewis lewis and lewis c s ranks below this!

Now I have edited my noiseENG.txt, removed the single letters and rebuilt my fulltext catalogue but I see no change in my results. I know changing this file is working because I've added lewis to the list and it filtered out all searches with lewis in the author column.

Note: If I search for just 'c s' I get no results, so it seems like single letters are being ignored all together! Also, the fields indexed are all set to British English.

Does anyone know why the FREETEXTTABLE command would still be filtering out single letters?

Answer 1

Try a phrase search a la:

@author = '"lewis c s"'