In SQL 2008 fulltext intexes exclude stopwords. The default stoplist can be disabled by using with stoplist off when creating the fulltext index on the table. Another limitation that I cannot seem to get around is that fulltext search function contains only allow wildcard characters at the end. Probably due to the same index limitations as ends-with ( like '%word' ) searches has. See following examples: Will not match "Joel" select * from Person where contains(FirstName,'"*oel*") Will match "Joel" select * from Person where contains(FirstName,'"*Joe*")