Google 101 - Two Important Google Quirks
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Much of the time, Google does what you expect. Quotes, “and” and “or,”special sym-bols—they’re all familiar from other search features you’ve probably used. But Google has two quirks worth noting: weird wildcards, and a ten-word query limit.
Wildcards
A lot of search engines let you use wildcards. Wildcards are special symbols—usually an asterisk (*) but sometimes a question qmark (?)—that you add to a term to indicate that you want the search to include variants of the term. The wildcard stands in for the possibilities. For example, it you’re not sure whether the Culture Club singer was Boy George or Boy Gorge, you might search for Boy G* to see how other people have completed the word.
But Google doesn’t let you include a wildcard as part of a word like that. Which, frankly, is a drag. (In programming circles, you may hear the partial-word wildcard called stemming.)
Google does, however, offer full-word wildcards. While you can’t insert an asterisk for part of a word, you can throw one into a phrase and have it substitute for a word.
Thus, searching for "chicken with its * cut off" could find: “chicken with its head cut off,”“chicken with its hair cut off,”“chicken with its electricity cut off,” and so on.
Tip: A single asterisk stands in for just one word. To set wildcards for more words, simply include more asterisks: "three * * mice" leads to “three blind fat mice,” “three very tough mice,” and so on.
The full-word wildcard is not as useful as the partial-word wildcard. But it can come in handy for filling in the blanks and when your memory fails. For example, you’ve always wondered exactly what Debbie Harry was singing in the first line of “Heart of Glass.” You think it might have been “Once I had a lung and it was a gas,” but you’re not sure. Maybe it was “Once I had a lunch and it was a gas.” Type in "Once I had a * and it was a gas"; Google gives you 416 links suggesting the lyric is actually “Once I had a love….” In short, the asterisk combined with quote marks can be good for finding quotations, song lyrics, poetry, and other phrases.
The full-word wildcard is also cool when you want the answer to a question. For example, If you’re wondering how often Halley’s comet appears, you can use the asterisk to stand in for your X factor by running this query:
Halley’s comet appears every * years
If you type your query as a question ("How often does Halley’s comet appear?"), then Google searches for instances of the question, which is a nice way to find other people with a thin knowledge of astronomy, but might not actually turn up the answer.
Tip: For a search engine that does allow partial-word wildcards, try AltaVista.
The Ten-Word Limit
Quite possibly, you’ve been using Google since Bill Clinton was president and you’ve never noticed that the site has a strict limit of ten words per search. Indeed, for most people, this limitation is not a problem. But if you’re the type who likes to search for long phrases, it can be maddening.
For example, if you’re looking for "There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold and she’s buying a stairway to heaven", Google cuts you off after “gold.”If that’s a problem because, say, you want only instances of the whole sentence, or if you want to add additional query words ("live recording", for example), you can employ a couple of tricks to circumvent the limit.
Obscurity rules
You can get relevant results without wasting precious keywords by limiting your query to the more unusual keywords or phrase fragments you want to find. In this case, a query that included—
"glitters is gold" "buying a stairway"
—would probably keep you on track while conserving eleven words. If that doesn’t fly, try adding words one or two at a time ("buying a stairway to heaven" instead of "buying a stairway").
Playing the wildcard
Google doesn’t count wildcards as part of your ten-word limit. So the full-word wildcard, described above, can really help you out here. Just toss in wildcards for common words, and you’re in business. For example—
"* * lady * sure * * glitters * gold * she’s buying * stairway * heaven"
—looks strange if you’re a person, but Google is a mess of computers, and it eats that query right up while saving you nine big keywords. This is a particularly good trick if you’re looking for something with a lot of common words, like "year *, year *," or "easy *, easy *".
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