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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-31T23:41:30+00:00

Which query is faster and why for a database with 1M records in a

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Which query is faster and why for a database with 1M records in a table ? How can I optimize the query ?
First one:

SELECT id,column1,column2 FROM `table1` WHERE MATCH(column1) 
AGAINST('string1 string2 string3 ' in boolean mode) ORDER BY column2 ASC LIMIT 10

Second one:

SELECT id,column1,column2 FROM `table1` WHERE column1 LIKE %string1% 
OR column1 LIKE %string2% OR column1 LIKE %string3% OR column2 LIKE %string1% 
OR column2 LIKE %string2% OR column2 LIKE %string3% OR column3 LIKE %string1% OR
column3 LIKE %string2% OR column3 LIKE %string3%  ORDER BY column2 ASC LIMIT 10
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Match against is a fulltext search. If you created a fulltext search index for MySQL it will be much faster than the LIKE ‘%…%’, because in this case there will be no index.

    The reason why there cannot be any index on ‘%…%’, is because it is simply not fast to create an index on every letter of your strings.

    Also those two query’s have a different function, the fulltext index scans for words and is only usable with words. You cannot search a string “emil” with “match against(‘mi’ in boolean mode). That will not work.
    Of course with like this works.

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