SQL Server Full Text Search - Weighting Certain Columns Over Others

You can do something like the following query. Here, WeightedRank is computed by multiplying the rank of the individual matches. NOTE: unfortunately I don't have Northwind installed so I couldn't test this, so look at it more like pseudocode and let me know if it doesn't work.

declare @searchTerm varchar(50) = 'model';

 SELECT 100 * coalesce(ct1.RANK, 0) +
        10 * coalesce(ct2.RANK, 0) +
        1 * coalesce(ct3.RANK, 0) as WeightedRank,
        *
   FROM dbo.Product
            LEFT JOIN
        CONTAINSTABLE(Product, Name, @searchTerm) ct1 ON ct1.[Key] = Product.ProductID
            LEFT JOIN
        CONTAINSTABLE(Product, Description, @searchTerm) ct2 ON ct2.[Key] = Product.ProductID
            LEFT JOIN
        CONTAINSTABLE(Product, ProductType, @searchTerm) ct3 ON ct3.[Key] = Product.ProductID 
 order by WeightedRank desc

Listing 3-25. Sample Column Rank-Multiplier Search of Pro Full-Text Search in SQL Server 2008

SELECT *
FROM (
    SELECT Commentary_ID
        ,SUM([Rank]) AS Rank
    FROM (
        SELECT bc.Commentary_ID
            ,c.[RANK] * 10 AS [Rank]
        FROM FREETEXTTABLE(dbo.Contributor_Birth_Place, *, N'England') c
        INNER JOIN dbo.Contributor_Book cb ON c.[KEY] = cb.Contributor_ID
        INNER JOIN dbo.Book_Commentary bc ON cb.Book_ID = bc.Book_ID

        UNION ALL

        SELECT c.[KEY]
            ,c.[RANK] * 5
        FROM FREETEXTTABLE(dbo.Commentary, Commentary, N'England') c

        UNION ALL

        SELECT ac.[KEY]
            ,ac.[RANK]
        FROM FREETEXTTABLE(dbo.Commentary, Article_Content, N'England') ac
        ) s
    GROUP BY Commentary_ID
    ) s1
INNER JOIN dbo.Commentary c1 ON c1.Commentary_ID = s1.Commentary_ID
ORDER BY [Rank] DESC;