Say asterisks 10 times fast
"I know you are not," said I, "because if you had been, you would have told me or
at least have been better away."
Jamptap has learned that the asterisk works with Google Number Search. Advanced google users already know that the asterisk acts as a wildcard for a missing word in a normal Google search phrase, as in
Search: Today is the first * of my life:
If you're not familiar with the 'power' of the asterisk, try the same search without using using it:
Search: Today is the first of my life
In normal google search, the asterisk can also be useful when appended to the end of a single word if you want to see the most popular word (or in a few cases words) that follows the provided search term. This also works in Google Number Search, except that you have to append the asterisk to the end of the word-number; it only works for a single search term. For example, if I am searching in number mode and feel fairly confident that if I search Paula* then I'd get Paula Abdul, then I can search 'num:72852*'
This can save users a lot of time on a lot of mobile searches.
You can also use the appended asterisk on GNS to confirm spelling of a person's last name, like Noam Chomsky: Num:6626*
The asterisk also works in a way that reminds me of Google Suggest. Let's say I want to find the most common word that follows the word 'Mobile.' I'd search: num:662453* and get 'mobile phones, mobile Treo, mobile espn, ...' in that order.
The asterisk doesn't work well either within or appended to a word-number phrase (using ALLNUM). Oh, well.
posted by self @ 2:23 PM
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