Full-text search is one of the techniques for searching a document or database stored on a computer. While searching, the search engine goes through and examines all of the words stored in the document and tries to match the search query against those words. A complete examination of all the words (text) stored in the document is undertaken and hence it is called a full-text search.

Full-text search excels in searching large volumes of unstructured text quickly and effectively. It returns pages based on how well they match the user's query.

To understand the difference between a normal search and full-text search, let's take an example of a MySQL database table and perform searches on it.

It is assumed that MySQL Server and phpMyAdmin are already installed on your system.