How to google search for a phrase with one word optional

google-search

I want to search for all phrases "the [something] effect", with any word substituting for [something].

Thus "The Rosie Effect", the "The butterfly effect", etc, should all be included.

Best Answer

Just use a wildcard *.

Example:

"The * effect"

Related Solutions

Firefox – Location for Google search and Firefox wrong

First thing to check: is Google using some cached user preferences which have changed?

If Google isn't setting the language based on a user preference, there are other ways it could be guessing the preferred language.

Web browsers send an Accept-Language header string as part of the request, and if 'nl' is listed first, like this:

Accept-Language:    nl,en-us;q=0.7,en;q=0.3

then Google will display a Dutch page.

I know you said you checked this in your question, but are you certain that the Firefox language preferences (Tools -> Options -> Content -> Languages) don't list Dutch [nl] among the options?

You can test what headers the browser is sending by visiting http://www.xhaus.com/headers

The other possibility is that the PC has been assigned (by the ISP) an IP address which appears to be in the Netherlands, or that web requests are being routed through some external proxy (hosted outside the US) which you're not aware of.

Try visiting http://www.geoiptool.com/ and see where it thinks you are.

How to find out the number of Google search results for a query

You can try Google Fight. It does the searches at the same time and gives you the numbers you're interested in.