The name “*** Dave” (and “***Dave”) is scattered all over the Internet. Alas … how to find it?<\/p>\n
Problem? Google (and pretty much everyone else) treats an asterisk in a search string as a wildcard. Searching for “*** Dave” means (to Google) “search for ‘Dave’ with anything preceding it.” All the search engine stuff I can find indicate an asterisk is used as a wildcard or truncation character in all of them.<\/p>\n
Not much good for narrowing the search down. Hoist by my own typography.<\/p>\n
Anyone have any good clues on how to tell search engines to treat the wildcard asterisk as a literal character?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The name “*** Dave” (and “***Dave”) is scattered all over the Internet. Alas … how to find it? Problem? Google (and pretty much everyone else) treats an asterisk in a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":14096,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/03\/10\/dave-needs.html","url_meta":{"origin":10238,"position":0},"title":"Dave needs …","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 10-Mar-09 6:54pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Type \u201c[your first name] needs\u201d into Google\u2019s search engine and list the first ten(ish) results. Nearly all will be amusing, but put an asterisk by the ones that are true about you. Dave needs ... a rest.* Dave needs ... help.* Dave needs ... a band. Dave needs ... a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Personality Tests"","block_context":{"text":"Personality Tests","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/personal\/personality-tests"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":956,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/10\/30\/the_saga_of_thr.html","url_meta":{"origin":10238,"position":1},"title":"The Saga of Three-Star Dave","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 30-Oct-01 6:24pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Back in the dim, dusty, dark ages of my life, along about Summer 1994, my company got access to the Internet via e-mail. It was good timing, since I was...","rel":"","context":"In "Job Jollies"","block_context":{"text":"Job Jollies","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/job-jollies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2440,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/06\/20\/the_saga_of_thr.html","url_meta":{"origin":10238,"position":2},"title":"The Saga of Three-Star Dave!","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 20-Jun-02 5:21pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Now it can be told ... again! Back in the dim, dusty, dark ages of my life, along about Summer 1994, my company got access to the Internet via e-mail....","rel":"","context":"In "Personal"","block_context":{"text":"Personal","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/personal"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6808,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/12\/28\/searches.html","url_meta":{"origin":10238,"position":3},"title":"Searches","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 28-Dec-04 11:13am","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't know, on some of these Google search strings in my referrer logs, if I wonder more how it was they actually found me, or why, looking for those...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":32768,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/14\/dave-hill-international-man-of-mystery-breathes-slightly-easier.html","url_meta":{"origin":10238,"position":4},"title":"Dave Hill, International Man of Mystery, breathes slightly easier","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 14-Mar-13 2:32pm","format":false,"excerpt":"At least it's somewhat less likely that when I come back from my next international trip (in a few weeks) I will have someone take all my electronic devices (for however lon they want) to search them for whatever they might happen to find without any sort of reasonable suspicion\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2535,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/06\/08\/bloggy_tweaks.html","url_meta":{"origin":10238,"position":5},"title":"Bloggy tweaks","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 8-Jun-02 10:17am","format":false,"excerpt":"In-between ranting about U.S. Bank (U.S. Bank Sucks!), I've been making some small changes here at ***Dave Does the Blog. Red\/yellow\/green lights on the media list. I think as things...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}