Wildcards

Use wildcard characters to match text patterns in Connect REST API searches.

A common use for wildcards is searching a feed. Pass a search string and wildcards in the q parameter. This example is a Connect REST API request.

Use these wildcard patterns in your searches.

Wildcard Pattern	Description
`*`	Asterisks match zero or more characters at the middle or end of your search term.
`john*`	Finds items that start with `john`, such as `john`, `johnson`, or `johnny`.
`mi* meyers`	Finds items with `mike meyers` or `michael meyers`.
`\*`	To search for a literal asterisk in a word or phrase, escape the asterisk (precede it with the `\` character).
`?`	Question marks match only one character in the middle or end of your search term. You can’t use a `?` in a lookup search.
`jo?n`	Finds items with the term `john` or `joan` but not `jon` or `johan`.

Consider these notes for using wildcards.

The more focused your wildcard search, the faster the search results are returned, and the more likely the results reflect your intention. For example, to search for all occurrences of the word prospect (or prospects, the plural form), it’s more efficient to specify prospect* in the search string than to specify a less restrictive wildcard search (such as prosp*) that could return extraneous matches (such as prosperity).
Customize your searches to find all variations of a word. For example, to find property and properties, specify propert*.
Punctuation is indexed. To find * or ? inside a phrase, you must enclose your search string in quotation marks and you must escape the special character. For example, "where are you\?" finds the phrase where are you?. The escape character (\) is required for this search to work correctly.