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How can I search for a keyword with special characters in Google Search?

I wanted to search for the phrase asterisk44asterisk (with the asterisk replaced by * of course) but cannot do this in Google.

The asterisk characters are skipped.

Does anybody know how to use an asterisk in your question ?

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See also webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/23/… – ChrisF♦ Aug 4 '11 at 11:39

migrated from superuser.com Aug 4 '11 at 9:52

marked as duplicate by Al Everett, phwd♦ Aug 4 '11 at 14:03

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

2 Answers

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Google Search Help

The *, or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can be very powerful. If you include * within a query, it tells Google to try to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches.

For example, the search [ Google * ] will give you results about many of Google's products. [...] The query [ Obama voted * on the * bill ] will give you stories about different votes on different bills.

Note that the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of words.

So therefore, it doesn't work the way you expect it.

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Yes I thought it was treated as a wild card. But the question remains: how can you search for a phrase containing a * ? Is there a * or /* way , some how ? Something I didn't try yet ? – Edelcom Aug 4 '11 at 11:52
Nope, you unfortunately can't search for special characters (it's somewhere in the Help too). See: webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/23/… – slhck Aug 4 '11 at 11:58
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According to Google help page, asteriks do work as you want :

Fill in the blanks (*)

The *, or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can be very powerful. If you include * within a query, it tells Google to try to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches. For example, the search [ Google * ] will give you results about many of Google's products (go to next page and next page -- we have many products). The query [ Obama voted * on the * bill ] will give you stories about different votes on different bills. Note that the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of words.

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> asteriks do work as you want That's not true, see the last sentence you quoted. – slhck Aug 4 '11 at 8:27
@slhck True. My mistake :) – Leito Aug 4 '11 at 8:31
@Leito Of course it doesn't work as I want. I was hoping if someone knows about some escape character to be able to SEARCH for a *. – Edelcom Aug 4 '11 at 11:53
@Edelcom Sorry, I understood the exact opposite in your question. – Otiel Aug 4 '11 at 17:14

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