Video:Search Tips For Google Wildcards

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Transcript:Search Tips For Google Wildcards

Hi, I'm Shane Murphy, your technology guru for About.com. Today we'll show how to search using the Google Wildcards feature.

When searching for a word on Google, the search engine automatically finds variations on each of the words you entered to create the best possible search options. Wildcards does something similar for entire words using the asterisk mark.

Use Asterisks for Google Wildcards

Simply enter the asterisk in place of a word you can't think of in a phrase or to look for variations on that phrase. For example, replace any word from "the devil is in the details" with an asterisk and Google will automatically complete the phrase with the most common iteration. Using quotation marks to force Google to look for your exact phrase is often more effective.

Tips for Google Wildcards

You can use as many asterisks as you want, but you must make spaces between each one for Google to recognize it as separate words.

The more asterisks you use, the more Google will have to extrapolate to try and retrieve what you're looking for, making for some messy searches.

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