How to Use Google Wildcard Operator for Link Building and Baiting

Google treats a wildcard * as a placeholder for one or more words. Although rarely used, this search operator offers a goldmine of great opportunities. This short SEO tip will showcase how you can use Google’s wildcard operator to search for backlink opportunities and link baiting inspiration:

Link Building Wildcard Search Queries:

One of the first things you do when starting a link building campaign is adding your link to relevant resources that accept link submissions. In this case your search for these sites will look like this:

• keyword “add url” / keyword “add site” / keyword “add website” / keyword “submit url”

Unfortunately with the above searches, you’ll miss very good link opportunities by restricting your search from pages offering to “add relevant site” or to “submit keyword site, etc. To include all possible variations into your search use wildcard operator:

• keyword “submit * url”
• keyword “submit * site”
• keyword “submit * website”
• keyword “suggest * url”
• keyword “suggest site”
• keyword “suggest * website”
• keyword “add * url”
• keyword “add * site”
• keyword “add * website”
• keyword “* related URLs”

The great thing about a wildcard is that it can be substituted by any number of words giving you thus a wider scope of results returned. For example, ["* related URLs"] search will return phrases containing “submit related URLs”, “list your related URLs”, “add related URLs”, etc.
You can go even further and use other advanced search operators for even more results; consider intitle: operator for example:

• keyword intitle:”submit * url”
• keyword intitle:”submit *site”
• keyword intitle:”submit * website”
• keyword intitle:”suggest * url”
• keyword intitle:”suggest site”
• keyword intitle:”suggest * website”

Link Baiting Wildcard Search Queries:

When we are stuck for post ideas or need to brainstorm some linkbaiting content, we often search Google for inspiration. The only problem is to guess what to search for – as we are yet unsure what we are trying to find. In this case, let Google decide what we want.
Try often-used Digg-style phrases in combination with wildcard and advanced date search:

• top * downloads;
• best * of the week;
• “best * sites”; etc.

Get even more creative and look for quiz-related bait (hat tip to SEOmoz.org):

• “how many * can you”;
• “what * are you”;
• “which * are you”, etc.

I hope this tip will help you get more creative and brainstorm for new sneaky ways to search Google. By the way, why not share them here?

Posted in: SEO Tips