Translated: require Pat, require Smith

Finds "Pat Smith"

Translated: forbid Bill, require Jones

Finds Jones other than Bill.

Translated: prefer Sue, require Smith

Finds all with term Smith, but documents with both terms appear higher in the list.

Translated: require the phrase "income tax"

Finds "income tax".

Translated: require Brown (case sensitive), require words starting with "poll"

Finds "Brown poll".
The asterisk is a wildcard representing any four or fewer characters.

Translated: require Venus (case sensitive), require pictures, forbid planet, prefer images

First lists "pictures and images of Venus", then "Venus pictures".
Does not list lowercase "venus picture", nor forbidden "picture of planet Venus".

Translated: ignores common words like where, is, and the - requires words containing "frog"

Finds "frog", "frogleg", and "bullfrog".
To suppress the ignore feature, use quotes, as in "Where is the *frog*?".

The asterisk is a powerful search tool, but has some limitations. It cannot span words - that is, the query "powerfu*earch" would not match the first sentence of this paragraph - and it can represent at most four letters or numbers. To avoid overly broad searches, the asterisk can only be used in words or phrases which have at least three alpha-numeric characters. A search for "th*" would be ignored.