How do you use wildcards in search?

Using wildcards in search engines

• I am looking for a way to use wildcards in search engines. I find it unthinkable that someone shouldn't have foreseen the benefits of supporting the use of wildcards in searching the Internet and implementing it. Then again, perhaps unthinkable is not a proper term to use with regard to the Internet and its present state.

• Answer:

  Jeff, Thanks for your question. Like you, I find it hard to believe that no major search engines make use of a wildcard function, and that the one search engine that used to have it (AltaVista) chose to abandon it. It b*ggles the mind! It's hard to know what the reason is. It may be the case, as has been suggested already, that use of wildcards creates a lot of server demand. I suspect a more likely reason is that casual users of search engines simply don't use wildcards, nor do they perceive a need for them. In the absence of a real demand for the service, they simply have not been pursued by the major search engines. Then, too, search engines have become ever-more sophisticated at automatically stemming, at including synonyms and other related words in searches, and in recognizing and correcting spelling errors. All these techniques have lessened the need for wildcards. For instance, you mentioned that wildcards are necessary since "Nobody can be sure of the spelling of every word" However, the ability of search engines to "guess" at the intended meaning of a mis-spelling has gotten awfully good in the past few years. Still....there are a few options available to you regarding actual wildcard searches. First of all, there is a wildcard, of sorts in Google. The asterisk character can be used in place of any single word (rather than a single letter). I know your question was about replacing letters, rather than words (and more on that below). But the Google asterisk is a good tool to be familiar with just the same, and is best used in combination with exact-phrase searching when you're not quite sure of the exact phrase. For instance, a Google search of [ "top 100 * cities" ] returns listings for: Top 100 Canadian cities Top 100 Unwired cities Top 100 Biggest Cities and even the Top 100 Sweatiest Cities =============== The Exalead search engine -- mentioned by pinkfreud-ga -- is the only mainstream search engine that I know of that has an actual wildcard function that can substitute for missing letters. However, I have to warn you, I've found Exalead to be hit-or-miss in the times I've used it for specialized functions -- sometimes the results are superb, and are unlike those from any other search engine. But at other times, I wind up with fairly garbled results that aren't much use. You'll have to do some experimenting. In addition to simple wildcards, using an asterisk [ * ], Exalead also allows for complex searches using what are known as "regular expressions" (in fact, wildcard searches are generally a specialized form of regular expression searching). Regular expressions are very difficult to learn to use, but once mastered, can provide very powerful search strategies. The instructions for Exalead advanced searching -- including wildcards and regular expressions -- can be found here: ----- http://beta.exalead.com/search/C=0/?2p=Help.2 Prefix search allows you to find documents based on the beginning of a word. This operator allows for instance, to find a proper noun from its shortened version, or to search on the linguistic root of a word. Jenn* Searches for documents containing words starting with Jenn: Jennifer, Jennie, Jenni, Jenna, etc. develop* developing, developed, development, develops, etc. Patterns Exalead supports regular expression patterns. Patterns are introduced by a slash ('/') character. Within a regular expression, '.' is a special character that can represent any character, '*' stands for character repetition, '|' stands for 'or', and parenthesis are used to group characters. '?' is placed the end of a character group to make it optional. /s.ren..pi.y/ Searches for documents with words that match the pattern S . R EN .. PI . Y -- this can be very useful to finish your crossword puzzles! /mpg(1|2|3)?/ Searches for documents containing any of the following: mpg, mpg1, mpg2, or mpg3. ----- To really take full advantage of the wildcard and regular expression functions, spend some time playing around with Exalead, and using the examples provided above. It can be a very cool search experience (when it works!). =============== A specialized blogging search engine known as Blogdigger: http://www.blogdigger.com also seems to offer limited support for a wildcard functions, with an asterisk [ * ] as the stand-in for a single character. For instance, a search on [ w*shington ] will return hundreds of thousands of results, appropriately focused on [ washington ]. However, not all searches using asterisks are equally satisfactory. Like Exalead, this may be something of a hit or miss function. =============== The best wildcard searches can be done using commercial sources that are independent of search engines. For some reason, search services like Lexis-Nexis are fully aware of the value of wildcards, even though search engines seem to have missed this entirely. Lexis-Nexis is not a free service. HOWEVER, you CAN search their databases for free -- using wildcards. If you want to actually retrieve the full documents, then you'll be required to pay a fee of a few dollars for each document. Not as satisfying as a free search engine, to be sure, but still, there are times when the flexibility in searching may be worth it. First, head to their main page at: http://www.nexis.com/research and on the right-hand side of the page, you'll see a hyperlink for "Not a Subscriber". Click on this, and the system will take you through its registration process (you'll need you credit card of course). Use the "Pay As You Go" option when given the option (but you won't have to actually pay anything unless you order a document). Finally, you'll get to the "search page" where you are given an option to search a variety of topical databases. Pick the databases of interest (e.g. news), and you're off. The wildcard characters in Nexis are [ * ] for a single character, and [ ! ] for multiple characters. For instance, a search on [ bath! ] will find articles with bath, bathroom, bathing, etc. =============== Lastly, there are many specialized sites on the internet that support wildcard searching for a specific database. For instance, if you're interested in American history, head to the Making of America site at: http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?sid=51a383ba92f628c53fc4594f9f2992d6;xg=1;page=simpleext;ALLSELECTED=1 and note their instructions on using an asterisk as a wildcard just beneath the search box: [ work* finds "worker," "working," etc. ] I trust this information fully answers your question. However, please don't rate this answer until you have everything you need. If you would like any additional information, just post a Request for Clarification to let me know how I can assist you further, and I'm at your service. All the best, pafalafa-ga search strategy -- Used bookmarked sites for search engines and databases