Using keyword = 'believe' instead of match(keyword) against('believe')

Databases
1

The first query produces many rows. The second query doesn’t produce any. If I change the keyword to lemon instead of believe, then both queries produce results. Any ideas on this one?

select * from searches where keyword = ‘believe’ order by sID;

select * from searches where MATCH(keyword) AGAINST(‘believe’);

Thanks!

2

Does keyword have FULLTEXT enabled?

3

perhaps ‘believe’ occurs in more than half the rows

remember, fulltext searching is supposed to work best on large datasets with sparse matches, and in particular, it’s optimized for more complex searches, e.g. ‘+apple +(>turnover <strudel)’