Search over Text, Is full-text only solution?

We have a web search engine that search in the text on around 50,000 Websites.
We search the text using SQL server full-text search.
We've built a ranking system so depending where the string was found, a point is assigned, example if the string was found in title we assign a higer score than if the string was found in the body.

The results are ok, the problem is wiht the speed, it takes from 5-60 seconds to output the results.

I don't know if someone could advice us on how to improve speed, is it full-text search the only way to search text?

Thanks

You can check out a third-party program fromhttp://www.imptechnology.com. They offer an add-on search engine that is very fast. Other than using a third-party product, full-text search is about your only option, unless you want to write your own Transact-SQL, which may or many not be as fast.

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Brad M. McGehee
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