Is there a benefit to storing plain-text (in addition to the HTML data) to improve searchability?

Question

To keep this simple, I intent to store some html based content that is created by the end user. So a table like the following

create table Content
(
   ContentId,
   Title,
   ContentHtml
)

Now, the HTML comes from let's say a CKEditor. Is it good practice to also store the plain text version of the content so that full text search or whatever search mech can more easily find the content? As shown below.

table Content
(
   ContentId,
   Title,
   ContentHtml,
   ContentPlainText
)

Have a look at this. http://www.developmentnow.com/blog/2006/08/12/sql-server-2005-full-text-search-on-html-documents/ — Hary, Jan 10 '13 at 06:01

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 13 '13 at 23:31

As pointed out in the comments: absolutely! There are formatting strings and HTML tags that don't pertain to any conceivable search (unless you're looking for formatting in particular, e.g., someone uses AliceBlue).

Also, your indeces are likely to be more efficient, speeding up your searches, if you're not throwing in "junk" like HTML tag names.

Is there a benefit to storing plain-text (in addition to the HTML data) to improve searchability?

1 Answers1