There are some good comparisons (including benchmarking) of full text search engines here: http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/mysql-performance-presentations/

There are some good comparisons (including benchmarking) of full text search engines here: http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/mysql-performance-presentations/ http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/mysql-performance-presen... One titled "Effective Full Text Search for Databases" and the other "High Performance FullText Search" Also, Sphinx supports distributed searching - I can't speak to this feature - but if anyone can I'm listening!