Information Retrieval.. help

Hey list! I have written several simple search scripts to retrieve basic data.. that is to say I wasn't worried about the actual relevancy of what I was retrieving. Now I need to write a search script that retrieves information based on the search terms in order of relevancy. It doesn't have to feature boolean operations but it does have to be fast and flexible. This is what I have so far. The database contains: ID Description -- ------------ 1 jade gold ring 2 grandmas golden ring with leaves 3 silver and gold diamond bracelet The user enters the search string: "ring gold leaves" I split the string into words and query them separately: "SELECT ID FROM jewlry WHERE description LIKE \"%ring%\"" returns 1,2 "SELECT ID FROM jewlry WHERE description LIKE \"%gold%\"" returns 1,2,3 "SELECT ID FROM jewlry WHERE description LIKE \"%leaves%\"" returns 2 Then I combine the results into one array and use arraycountvalues() to eliminate redundencies and count the number of occurances of each row. The number of occurances of a row should be equal to its relevancy so I sort the array by value: array ( 2 => 3, 1 => 2, 3 => 1); Hopefully that wasn't too hard to follow. I as examine my code I get the distinct impression that this is an extraordinarily Primative method. :) If so do you have any suggestions for improving it or can you please point me to resources (tutorials, books, websites, etc..) that would help me develope more a sophisticated technique? Much appreciated! Kevin Stone kevin@helpelf.com