Developer.com has posted a new tutorial by Jason Gilmore about the creation of a simple search engine based around a MySQL database and using PHP to perform the queries.

In this article I'll offer a simplified version of this search engine, introducing you to some compelling PHP and MySQL features along the way. You might adopt what you learn towards building your own search engine, or towards other applications.

He starts with the base of the application - the database schema (including loading data into it) - and works up from there. He opts to go with the fulltext search type as it can provide a huge performance boost over just using something like LIKE statements in your query. He also includes a bit of HTML for help make the output easier to use.