1. An apparatus, comprising: a processor circuit; a character set converter application operative on the processor circuit to receive a search string over a network from a requesting device, the search string comprised of one or more first character set characters, and convert the first character set characters of the search string to one or more second character set characters, the second character set different from the first character set; an index server operative to execute a search on the second character set search string to obtain one or more ranked individual search results, the search executed against a search database comprised of first and second character set characters; and a ranking application operative on the index server to compare any first character set characters in the ranked individual search results to the first character set characters in the search string, and sub-rank the ranked individual search results based on a match strength between the first character set characters of the search string and the first character set characters of the individual search results.
1. An apparatus, comprising: a processor circuit; a character set converter application operative on the processor circuit to receive a search string over a network from a requesting device, the search string comprised of one or more first character set characters, and convert the first character set characters of the search string to one or more second character set characters, the second character set different from the first character set; an index server operative to execute a search on the second character set search string to obtain one or more ranked individual search results, the search executed against a search database comprised of first and second character set characters; and a ranking application operative on the index server to compare any first character set characters in the ranked individual search results to the first character set characters in the search string, and sub-rank the ranked individual search results based on a match strength between the first character set characters of the search string and the first character set characters of the individual search results. 4. The apparatus of claim 1 , the ranking application further operative to: raise a sub-ranking of a ranked individual search result when there is a match between a first character set character in the search string and a first character set character in the individual search result; lower the sub-ranking of a ranked individual search result when there is not a match between a first character set character in the search string and a first character set character in the individual search result; and leave the sub-ranking of a ranked individual search result unchanged when there is no first character set character in the search string.