displaying search results of more than one word

Question

in my search form, if the user types 'good', it displays all the results which contain the keyword 'good'. however if the user types in 'good sweetest', it displays no results because there is no record with the two words appearing together; BUT appearing in an entry at different places.

for example, the record says:

A good action is an ever-remaining store and a pure yield

the user types in 'good', it will show up this record, but if the user types in 'good' + 'pure', it will not show anything. or if the record contains the keyword 'good-deeds' and if the user types in 'good deeds' without the hyphen, it will not show anything.

what i would like is that if the user types in 'good' + 'pure' or 'good deeds' it should records containing these keywords highlighting them.

search.php code:

$search_result = "";

$search_result = $_POST["q"];

$search_result = trim($search_result);

//Check if the string is empty
if ($search_result == "") {
  echo  "<p class='error'>Search Error. Please Enter Your Search Query.</p>" ;
  exit();
      }

if ($search_result == "%" || $search_result == "_" || $search_result == "+" ) {
  echo  "<p class='error1'>Search Error. Please Enter a Valid Search Query.</p>" ;
  exit();
      }

$result = mysql_query('SELECT cQuotes, vAuthor, cArabic, vReference FROM thquotes WHERE cQuotes LIKE "%' . mysql_real_escape_string($search_result) .'%" ORDER BY idQuotes DESC', $conn)
  or die ('Error: '.mysql_error());


function h($s) {
    echo htmlspecialchars($s, ENT_QUOTES);
} 

function highlightWords($string, $word)
 {

    $string = preg_replace("/".preg_quote($word, "/")."/i", "<span class='highlight'>$0</span>", $string);
    /*** return the highlighted string ***/
    return $string;

 }

?>

<div class="caption">Search Results</div>
<div class="center_div">
<table>
    <?php while ($row= mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_ASSOC)) {
        $cQuote =  highlightWords(htmlspecialchars($row['cQuotes']), $search_result);
        ?>
        <tr>
        <td style="text-align:right; font-size:18px;"><?php h($row['cArabic']); ?></td>
            <td style="font-size:16px;"><?php echo $cQuote; ?></td>
            <td style="font-size:12px;"><?php h($row['vAuthor']); ?></td>
            <td style="font-size:12px; font-style:italic; text-align:right;"><?php h($row['vReference']); ?></td>
        </tr>
    <?php } ?>
</table>
</div>

search.html:

   <form name="myform" class="wrapper">
      <input type="text" name="q" onkeyup="showUser()" class="txt_search"/>
      <input type="button" name="button" onclick="showUser()" class="button"/>
      <p>
        <div id="txtHint"></div>
    </form>

Answer 1

What you want is called full-text searching. Put simply, full-text searching basically searches for each individual word on its own.

Answer 2

You will want to implement content indexing to utilize this kind of search, essentially a relational table associating each word with a content component (like your record there), when you search query the index and return the associated content, also this allows you to change relevance by count, add fields to be indexed etc. http://www.databasejournal.com/sqletc/article.php/1578331/Using-Fulltext-Indexes-in-MySQL---Part-1.htm this might be a good start.

Answer 3

In my opinion, doing a search engine correctly for your site is one of the toughest things to do. I would just sign my site up on google and let google index it. You can customize the output of the page and integrate that look into your site.

The only evidence will be the "Google" branded search button, but to be honest, I think you can remove that now.