Examining Asterisk-Modified Search Queries in Google
This is a quick study on how asterisk symbol affects Google search queries, illustrated on a search for insurance in Google Australia.
Quick Summary:
insurance: brings results with word insurance highlighted in title and description
*insurance: word insurance is highlighted with the nearest relevant phrase before it
insurance*: word insurance is highlighted with the nearest relevant phrase after it
*insurance*: word insurance is highlighted with the nearest relevant phrases before and after it
Search Variations:
Where Google decided to bold a relevant related term instead of the main key term we searched for:
- Insure
Search Anomalies:
Terms that were bold in results that are either not relevant or useful to users:
- ! Insure
- its insurance
- | Insurance
- 25
- Insurance or
- Insure with
- insurance?
- Insurance |
- ! Insure with
From the above list we’re seeing quite a few symbols being affected by this including !, ?, | and numbers. Other examples are words like: its, or and with. The appearing number “25″ is somewhat relevant in the context of the page but within the extracted description snippet it appears semantically disconnected and not very relevant.
Notes: Ads and places are unaffected. News results however behave in the same way as standard serps.
Try these searches for yourself or take a look at relevant screenshots in our gallery:
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