Trying to build intelligent query from question

Hi, I may be doing this all the wrong way :) so feel free to let me know, thanks. I've been developing a q/a database. I don' want to search on "what I consider" common words. Certainly there must be a list of these. Anyhow, I explode the question string into words and then iterate as such: foreach($words as $Key=>$Value) { if($ignoreWords[strtolower($Value)]) { continue; } Here is my $ignoreWords array: $ignoreWords = array('brazil'=>1,'like'=>1,'the'=>1,'this'=>1,'that'=>1,'why'=>1,'are'=>1,'there'=> 1,'where'=>1,'find'=>1,); What do you think? Do I just build up $ignoreWords like I'm doing or this there another way I've missed? Also, does someone have a list of "common words to ignore"? Thanks, Peter