# Full-text search without leaving Postgres
Before reaching for an external search service, check whether Postgres full-text search covers the need. For titles, descriptions, and document bodies up to moderate scale, it does, with ranking and stemming built in.
## Checkable procedure
1. Add a `tsvector` column (or a generated one) combining the searchable fields with appropriate weights: title weight A, body weight B. Generated columns keep it in sync automatically.
2. Index it with GIN. Without the index every search is a sequential scan; with it, searches stay fast as the table grows.
3. Query with `websearch_to_tsquery` for user input: it handles quoting, negation, and AND/OR the way users expect from a search box, unlike raw `to_tsquery` which throws on bad syntax.
4. Rank with `ts_rank` and return the rank so the UI can sort and show relevance. Unranked full-text results feel broken even when the matching is right.
5. Pick the right language configuration for stemming. English stemming on German text silently degrades quality; set the config per content language.
## Ordering constraints
Column and index before the search UI. Backfill the tsvector for existing rows in the migration, or old content is unsearchable.
## Verification
Search for a stemmed variant ("running" finding "run"), a quoted phrase, and a common word. Confirm ranking puts the best match first and latency stays flat as the table grows.