Ranking not correct in sql server 2012 full text search
Since you are using FREETEXTTABLE the ranking is very loose because its interpretation of the string is loose.
The text you supplied for row 2 only has one direct match (&quot;Engineer&quot;), but row 3 has 2 matches(&quot;trail&quot; and &quot;Engineer&quot;).
But you need to understand the difference between FREETEXT and FREETEXTTTABLE operators and the more precise CONTAINS and CONTAINSTABLE operators.
See https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms176078.aspx which explains in part:

• Generates inflectional forms of the words (stemming).
• Identifies a list of expansions or replacements for the terms based on matches in the thesaurus.

Because FREETEXT freely interprets your data using a thesaurus it is likely that &quot;trail&quot; and &quot;road&quot; are interpreted as equivalent in meaning and therefore the two rows get the same score.
If you need more precise answers you should use CONTAINSTABLE.