Subscribe Via Email
How to Use Google to Perform a Wildcard Search Using the Asterisk *
Using an asterisk (the * symbol) in your searches can add quite a bit of power to what you are able to find. Not many people are aware of this, but the asterisk can substitute for any word, or a number of words in your Google search. To see how this can be useful, check out some of the examples below.
Using the Wildcard to Find the Length of a Marathon
Let’s say that you want to find out how long a marathon is. All you have to do is type “a marathon is * miles long” into Google, and it will match phrases that contain that phrase with a something between is and miles, which should be our answer.
Since we were pretty specific, you can see that we only got 280 results, but the first four results seem to indicate unanimously that a marathon is 26.2 miles long.
It is remarkably easy to use Google to find out answers to questions without even going past the results page. As you can see, Google found our answer and displayed it for us on the results page.
Using the Wildcard to Find the Weight of a Macbook Air
Let’s say you’ve gotten tired of lugging around your six pound laptop. If you are curious as to how much the new Macbook Air weighs, all you have to do is type “macbook air weighs * pounds” into Google and you’ll get your answer.
As you can see, the general consensus among all three pages is that the Macbook Air weighs exactly 3.0 pounds.
It is always a good practice when doing searches like the above two to make sure that all of the pages agree. Keep in mind that this is the internet, and anybody can post whatever they want — fact or fiction.
Using the Wildcard to Find Thomas Edison’s Inventions
If you want to easily find out some of the amazing things that Thomas Edison invented in his lifetime, all you have to do is type thomas edision invented the *, and Google will return pages telling you what Thomas Edison was responsible for inventing.
As you can see, we find out from the first five results that Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, the incadescent lightbulb, the Quadraplex telegraph, and that he had a hand in inventing the modern alkaline battery.
Using the Wildcard to Find Celebrities’ Middle Names
The wildcard character can also be used to find many celebrities’ middle names. Let’s say you’re wondering what Barack Obama’s middle name is. It is normally not mentioned in public — not even an initial. All you have to do is type in barack * obama.
This tells Google to find Barack Obama, but to find something between those two names. In this case, the only logical thing that would come between his first and last name, would be his middle name.
From the first four search results, it is evident that Barack Obama’s middle name is Hussein.
In contrast, when you just perform a Google search for Barack Obama, no mention of the middle name Hussein is made, not even in his website’s Meet the Candidate section:
Using the Wildcard to Find Song Lyrics
Everytime I listen to the song Superman by Five For Fighting, I can never quite understand what he is saying near the end. It sounds like he says: I’m only a man with some moldy red cheese lookin’ for kryptonite.
That never quite made sense to me, and I was sure that I had the lyrics wrong. Fortunately, I decided to figure out what the real lyrics are. I did that using Google by typing in I’m only a man * kryptonite. I typed in only the lyrics that I was sure of. I knew that he sang I’m only a man, and that he ended with the word kryptonite, so that’s what I tried.
Without even going to another web page, I can plainly see what he sings in search results 2-4. What he really sings is I’m only a man in a silly red sheet Digging for kryptonite… Now I can unabashedly sing along in front of my friends!
Using the Wildcard to Find People’s Preferences
Let’s say you want to know a little more about internet users’ favorite colors. You can try typing in “my favorite color is *”. As you can see, I get a mix of results.
If you’re really bored, you could go through and count the number of times a color is mentioned to formulate some statistics on the favorite color of cyberspace… or not.
Conclusion
As you can see, the wildcard operator really has too many uses to mention here. Its uses are only limited by your imagination.
If you can think of more useful or clever ways to use the wildcard, please post them below in the comments section.
Comments
One Response to “How to Use Google to Perform a Wildcard Search Using the Asterisk *”
Leave a Reply
Poll: Favorite Search Engine
Loading ...
Hi,
I have a question. If * stands for ONE OR MORE words, how come using *, **, *** etc. brings different results?
As an example, these searches:
“my * friend”
“my ** friend”
“my *** friend”
will have different results.
What is happening there?
Thanks!