You may be searching but the problem is that you only know part of what you need. You have a rough idea of what you need. Google can fill in and look for what is available with the wildcard, called the asterisk.

Let’s use an example. Perhaps you want to know what has been written about Chris Pirillo and dogs. You could search “Chris Pirillo likes dogs”, “Chris Pirillo sells dogs”, “Chris Pirillo videotapes dogs”… the list would be endless. To find out what Google has on this topic, with one search query, the wildcard can be used. It would look like this [”Chris Pirillo * dogs”], entered without the brackets. The asterisk is a placeholder for one or more words. Google will look for phrases that include “Chris Pirillo” and “dogs”. (The results are somewhat amusing.)

The asterisk is a placeholder for the term or terms that you do not know. - I find that this is a search technique that I use often. It is Google assisting some overworked or underachieving brain cells. I can remember perhaps one or two words. For example, the title of a book or name of a song. Instead of adding more brain stress, the Google wildcard takes the bits that I remember and fills in the rest. The Google wildcard is wonderful for preventing further brain strain.

Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster: http://flyinghamster.com/

Tags: google, search, wildcard, asterisk, memory