searching and sorting

I am new(relatively) to php programing and searching. I am trying to understand the best way to access data and deliver results to searches on a product catalog website. I have two kinds of data that I am sorting and displaying results for. The first is info about specific products, and the other is text based general information, notes, and specials that will be stored in a database as well. My question is what is the best way to format and sort all of this info before results delivery. I am thinking of incrementally adding the resultant hits into two associative arrays with the link to the data and a calculated relevance value, and sorting this array by these relevences. One array would be for text data links and another would be for catalog item links. If I have two arrays(sorted), than I could display them like Amazon.com does with products in the main display area(with pictures), and text links to the side. Am I thinking of an efficient way to go about this, or not? I wonder if anyone has more experience, or some suggested resources in understanding building good search building? I would like to find such a book or resource that maps out good search and results procedures. -Brian