Comments on: How to Use Google to Perform a Wildcard Search Using the Asterisk *

By: Tokarski

Tokarski — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 04:39:38 +0000

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 02:35:03 +0000

That’s a good question. After running a few searches, it appears that a search for “my * friend” will bring up results that include “my friend” as well as “my _______ friend”.

When you include two asterisks, it picks up roughly 100 million MORE results, so it looks like Google is now including pages that have:

“my friend”
“my _______ friend”
AND
“my _______ _______ friend”

Thanks for the info. If my explanation doesn’t seem right, let me know! Thanks for the comment!

By: Irina Shamaeva

Irina Shamaeva — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 05:06:41 +0000

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!