Wildcard Search : When and How To Use It

July 8th, 2008 by Ann Smarty | 9 Comments

Sometimes you don’t know what exactly you are looking for. That’s when wildcard search may come in handy. Wildcard search can be used as placeholder for any sequence of characters or words. It is a seldom discussed search operator that can help a lot with SEO analysis and research.

Search engines treat wildcard search (an asterisk) the following way:

Search Engine	Notes	Examples
Google	Wildcard matches one or more words More stemming within search results. Search terms in titles are less frequently bolded.	Compare: [theolog] and [theolog] [free degree] and [free degree]
Yahoo	Seems to work with exact match; Less bolding within the results.	[theolog] is identical to [theolog] Compare: ["online programs"] and [“online programs”]
MSN/ Live	Doesn’t seem to work at all	["online programs"] and ["online * programs"]
Exalead	Replaces zero or more *characters* (works only at the end of a word); No bolding within search results.	Compare: [theolog*] and [theolog]

Thus it makes sense to use wildcard search in Google for:

Keyword research: find more long tail phrases based on your core terms. Be sure to play with numerous variations and try using exact match, e.g. [blue * widgets] vs [“blue * widgets”];
Link building: try [submit * link] to get an idea of how much more results you can find.
Brand evaluation: play with the brand name most powerful matches: [amazon.com *];
Finding quick answers (in bold) - compare: ["google was launched in *"] and ["google was launched in"]

Vote for this post : 7

or Buzz it at Yahoo :

Comments

9 responses so far ↓

Raj Krishnaswamy on Jul 8, 2008 at 9:50 am

Nice article. Good comparison with search engines besides google.
Mercy on Jul 8, 2008 at 11:33 am

Hi Ann,

Wildcard search in Google returns me 502 Server Error. I have chked with my colleague too.
Martyn P on Jul 8, 2008 at 11:58 am

@ Mercy: Same here.
Loren Baker, Editor on Jul 8, 2008 at 12:16 pm

Interesting, I’m now noticing the 502 error too.
Ann Smarty on Jul 8, 2008 at 12:32 pm

Strange… I see no error when checking right now.
Dr. Pete on Jul 8, 2008 at 12:48 pm

Interesting comparison, Ann. I wish the wildcards on all of the engines were a bit more flexible and handled any sort of partial word. I suppose the computational requirements would be enormous, though, especially for Google.
Martyn P on Jul 8, 2008 at 3:17 pm

It’s fine again for me. Wierd.
Mercy on Jul 8, 2008 at 11:12 pm

Hello all,

Its working fine now :-)
vargis on Jul 9, 2008 at 1:36 pm

Ann

Soory Ann i ddt get ur article .. . am doing webdesigning .. also interested and spending time to learn seo and doing some experiments on web .. ha ha..

Ann can send me …. some simple ideas abt wildcard search