Technote Details :: I can't search 3-letter words

When I try to search 3-letter words, MX Site Search does not return any results, even though there are records containing the 3-letter combination.

This happens because MX Site Search uses full text search on the database. MySQL creates full-text indexes only for a minimum number of letters, as specified in the configuration (by default, 4 letters are necessary to create a full text index).

MySQL has a default setting that defines the minimum number of letters a word must have in order to be part of a full-text index. This setting has been set to achieve optimum search results. However, for a personal optimization, the number of letters can be changed.

If you want to change these settings, to say – 3 letters, just set ft_min_word_len=3 restart the MySQL server and rebuild your indexes (MX Site Search should already do this automatically from time to time). 

This is supported only for MySQL 4.0 or higher. For more information, click here.