Using Wildcards

The Search app allows you to use a question mark and / or an asterisk as wildcard characters in a text-based search. For information on using the tilde symbol ( ~ ), see Fuzzy and Proximity Searches.

If you create a search using the Any or Markers and Segments search types with multiple terms in the same pill and you include a wildcard in the text, the rule that requires all terms to be found in the same field no longer applies. In this case the search might return search results based on the individual terms.

You can substitute the question mark ( ? ) for any single character in a text-based search. For example, if you enter Lo?d?n, your search results might include matches for London, Loyden, or others.

You can substitute an asterisk ( * ) to replace one or more characters in a text-based search. You can use an asterisk as the leading character, tailing character, or as a value in the middle of a term.

Consider the results for the following search terms. In this example, you can assume that the search index includes assets with the following names: fire, wildfire, wildfires, bushfire, frame

Search term type and value	Result
Any: fire	Returns: fire No other assets are returned as the user did not add a wildcard as a leading character.
Any: wildfire	Returns: wildfire, wildfires The search engine understands the use of plural words and returns both assets, even though wildfires is not an exact match.
Any: *fire	Returns: fire, wildfire, bushfire The search returns the exact match, as well as all assets that end with fire. In this case wildfires is not returned because it is not a plural of “fire”. If you want the plural to be included in your search results, you might search for fire or *fire? instead.
Any: f*e	Returns: fire, frame As the wildcard is used in the middle of the search term value, the search returns all assets that start with “f” and end with “e”.