ranking database searches

This may be more trouble than I'm interested in, but I'm working on search functionality for a number of our MySQL database projects. I'm looking for ways (or just ideas about ways) to set up a ranking system such that I could have exact matches at the top of the list, then multiple partial matches listed below that, and single partial matches below that, etc. I'm proceeding currently with multiple queries and associative arrays, but I'm wondering if I'm going down the wrong path. It seems like it's going to add a ton of processing overhead. Any thoughts? Michael Hall Lead Web Developer / Database Engineer Prairie Fire Internet Technologies mike@pfbiz.com