I had wondered about the =*= when I first saw it in Shally Steckerl’s wonderful Google cheat sheet, too. Looking into it, there is a Google help document, with a copyright date of 2002 that states:
“Google recognizes hyphens, slashes, periods, equal signs, and apostrophes as phrase connectors.”
(one copy of it is posted at: http://www.usdoj.gov/google_user_help.html, and also many other places, but apparently no longer on Google)

For some time, I have been using hyphens to substitute for quotation marks in certain situations, e.g.: [minivan 35..-mpg]. Here, I am able to use a number-range search and still “glue” another search term to it, to assure that the number range search result relates to the concept I desire. I can also do this search as [minivan 35..=mph] or [minivan "35.. mph"]. Though, I do see that it is bringing back some varying results–which I’ll have to play with some more. (Sorry, I am a research trainer rather than a recruiter, so my searches may be a bit off-point for this audience.)

So, since you can use the punctuation listed above to “glue” terms together into a phrase, it solves the ~ problem that Glen and Kelly were discussing:

“~administer * linux” negates the related term search usually stimulated by the tilde, but

~administer=*=linux
gives you the wildcard and also retains the related term search. One of you who knows more about recruiting will have to tell me if this is a good result, but it looks like it works to my eye.

What is brilliant about using =*= in training other searchers is that it makes spaces visible, and helps people remember to have them there, when other forms of notating spaces can be confusing.

Glen, thanks for the awesome post!

Essentially I need to search for pages that contain an asterisk (”*”) joined to a word (in particular the phrase “miRNA*”) where the asterisk DOES NOT represent a wild card, but literally the asterisk character.

Does anyone know how to do this?

many many thanks in advance

http://www.codecoffee.com/tipsforlinux/articles/26-1.html

Your response is a breath of fresh air and provides insight as to your level of understanding and expertise. The force is strong with you!

As for your questions…

Question
First, Why use the ~ with “~administer * linux”??? The tilde would typically find synonyms, but is trumped by the quotes. With and without it, you get the same results when used inside quotation marks. What are we trying to accomplish here? Is there something I’m missing???

Answer
You’re on the money – the ~ is actually superfluous and does not affect the total number of results for the “~administer * linux”. However, adding a tilde to a similar search actually DOES affect the results totals. Why, I’m not exactly sure yet, because the first several pages don’t appear to be drastically different.

For example – this search produces 512K results:
(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) “~develop * applications” -job -jobs

And this search produces 151K results:
(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) “develop * applications” -job -jobs

However, even when using the ~ in the above search, Google does not appear to actually do anything with the tilde. Perhaps as you suggest, the quotation marks trump the tilde – but that would be somewhat unique to Google. While not an exact comparison, many resume search engines and ATS’s will allow you to run something similar to this: “database admin*”, and they will actually process the asterisk wildcard, returning “database administrator” and “database administration” – even though technically you’re asking for an exact phrase. With Google, there really is no reason (other than its programming) why it could not process “~administer * linux” and return results with phrases beginning with the word administration instead of just administer.

Question
When I run site:linkedin.com (inurl:in OR inurl:pub) manager -intitle:directory…. I get 9.69 million. When I leave out the -intitle:directory piece I get 6.39 million. HUH???? By ELIMINATING pages that have the word directory in the title, I got MORE overall results. I would think that by eliminating any word, I would by definition, get less. Furthermore, site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) manager -intitle:directory (Search A = 9.96m) And site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) manager intitle:directory (Search B = 4.47m) And site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) manager (SEARCH C = 6.69m). Shouldn’t A+B=C??? Those without directory in the title + Those with directory in the title = Those with or without directory in the title? Can someone explain that one???

Answer
With very large results, Google is merely estimating, and you couldn’t actually verify any results past 1000 anyway. Although I see your point and understand the confusion – you’re right, the numbers don’t even remotely “add up” anyway, even if they are estimates.

Making the search more precise to limit the results to a smaller number, we can experiment to see if the same strangeness applies to smaller result sets.

All appears to be as it should be here – when we remove directory from the title, we get less results, as we would expect.

This search returns 21 results:
site:linkedin.com (inurl:in OR inurl:pub) +manager “atlanta area” oracle bpel

While this search returns 10 results:
site:linkedin.com (inurl:in OR inurl:pub) +manager “atlanta area” oracle bpel -intitle:directory

However, specifically targeting results WITH directory in the title, we should get the difference between the 2 searches above (11) – but we only get 5.
site:linkedin.com (inurl:in OR inurl:pub) +manager “atlanta area” oracle bpel intitle:directory

So we definitely still get some weirdness as the numbers don’t add up.

You raised an excellent point with the sample size with regard to testing the various punctuation marks, so I decided to replicate your searches, yet still limit them so that their results would be less than 1000, but still several 100. When you get results in the 10’s of 1000’s and higher, Google’s just making a rough estimate, which isn’t conducive to analyzing results, IMO.

As you found, the = / . and the phrase inside of quotes all pulled the same number of results:
intitle:resume linux=*=administrator +kernel +korn 540 Results
intitle:resume linux/*/administrator +kernel +korn 540 Results
intitle:resume “linux * administrator” +kernel +korn 540 Results
intitle:resume linux.*.administrator +kernel +korn 540 Results

However, quite the opposite of your findings, when I used the ? and spaces without quotes, I actually got MORE results:
intitle:resume linux?*?administrator +kernel +korn 1560 Results
intitle:resume linux * administrator +kernel +korn 1560 Results

And when I didn’t use a space at all – I got even MORE results (which is odd!):
intitle:resume linux*administrator +kernel +korn 1640 Results

I didn’t get any results with the &:
intitle:resume linux&*&administrator +kernel +korn 0 Results

You mentioned that you think Google does look for the &, and that my search yielded zero results because it was too specific, but with a less restrictive search using only…. linux&*&administrator… you found one result, with that EXACT sequence of characters in the text. That’s my article.

You CAN get results if you put a space on either side of the ampersands, but that doesn’t shed any light on the fact that the only result that I get for linux&*&administrator is actually my site. It can be confusing, because Google will ask if you meant linux &*& administrator (with the spaces) – but the only real result is my website.

Thank you for reading my site and for commenting and sharing your insights. I look forward to seeing more from you!

First, Why use the ~ with “~administer * linux”??? The tilde would typically find synonyms, but is trumped by the quotes. With and without it, you get the same results when used inside quotation marks. What are we trying to accomplish here? Is there something I’m missing???

Second, let me say that I love the use of the * to find current job titles in LinkedIn and Twitter, and use it regularly. However, I have a different question about the search string… When I run site:linkedin.com (inurl:in OR inurl:pub) manager -intitle:directory…. I get 9.69 million. When I leave out the -intitle:directory piece I get 6.39 million. HUH???? By ELIMINATING pages that have the word directory in the title, I got MORE overall results. I would think that by eliminating any word, I would by definition, get less. Furthermore, site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) manager -intitle:directory (Search A = 9.96m) And site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) manager intitle:directory (Search B = 4.47m) And site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub OR inurl:in) manager (SEARCH C = 6.69m). Shouldn’t A+B=C??? Those without directory in the title + Those with directory in the title = Those with or without directory in the title? Can someone explain that one???

For the punctuation searches, you need to have a larger sample in order to determine the impact of the results. Adding location in to the search limits it to a point where you can’t “see” what the punctuation is doing. I ran theses tests a few years ago, and just ran them again using your examples, though with a simplistic string to enough results to find the differences. Here’s what I got… IDENTICAL results for these.

intitle:resume linux=*=administrator 94.8k results
intitle:resume linux/*/administrator 94.8k results
intitle:resume “linux * administrator” 94.8k results

To test it, I threw a period in there too, since the period is by many people used to duplicate the effect of ” ” since it is a “one character wildcard” (the character usually being a space). Surprise surprise – the same darn results.
intitle:resume linux.*.administrator 94.8k results

Conclusion: The / and the = function as one character wildcards, much like the period does, all duplicating the effect of using quotation marks. Seems easy enough, but here’s where I get stumped…

The ? and nothing, both yield LESS that then above searches by a TON.

intitle:resume linux?*?administrator 31 RESULTS
intitle:resume linux * administrator 31 RESULTS

HUH???? I have no clue what the ? did. I don’t even have a theory for that one. Furthermore, it makes no sense, that “linux * administrator” gets 94.8k, but the same things out of quotes gets 31. It’s against all reason, and I’m stumped. Out of quotes, there is no need for proximity, AND Google will stem on them as well, so it should find administrate/administrator/administration/admin/etc. There should be TONS more results with the search out of quotes.

Lastly, the use of the & in the search… Google does look for it… your search yielded zero results because it was too specific, but with a less restrictive search using only…. linux&*&administrator… you will find one result, with that EXACT sequence of characters in the text.

Whew! Back to work now.