Problems with multi-word search results relevance/quotation marks

[amelem24]

Hi there. We've using the cgi version to index an extremely large site and are having a problem with multi word searches not displaying the most relevant results first--specifically displaying pages with longer titles containing additional words. Using fruits as the example, page titles are structured "Apple Orange | Site Name" and URLs mirror page titles, eg. www.fruit.com/apple-orange. There are thousands of different fruit combinations across the site.

When one searches Apple Orange (not using quotation marks), the first results displayed are "apple banana orange," "apple blueberry orange," "apple strawberry orange," "apple blueberry peach banana orange," and onward until the Apple Orange page appears numerous pages of results later. When one searches "apple orange" in quotation marks, the results page displays "Your search query contained too many common words to return the entire set of results available. Please try again with a more specific query for better results." In this case Apple Orange is higher in the search results but still behind pages with "Apple Orange" in the body.

In our weightings settings, Page Title and is boosted, Word position and URL length are set to Strong Adjustment. What am I missing??? Any help or advice is MUCH appreciated!!!

[David]

Your search query contained too many common words

Change the optimization setting in the Limits window to remove this warning. Move the slider to slow search.

There is no point boosting page title if all the words appears in all the titles. If you do a search for Apple Orange, then from the search engines point of view all of the following are equally relevant titles.
apple blueberry orange
orange apple blueberry
Apple Orange
Orange Apple
apple blueberry peach banana orange

That is to say, all the search words appear on the page and they are close together. So they all look good to the engine.
But doing exact phrase should help a lot.
You can also do negative searches. e.g
Apple Orange -blueberry

Maybe the problem is that your pages are not unique enough? I am guessing you can't change this now however?