The computer would see the Paul and the Smith and call it a match. The order of the words wouldn t matter, just the proximity. This is a great technique for finding all pages about a particular person. That s right. A wildcard can represent any other card in the deck.
Wildcard capabilities exist in search engines also.
For those of you that have ever used DOS, this may be a little familiar. The asterisk can represent any number of alphabetic or numeric characters and the question mark can only represent one. I know that sounded confusing, so let me include an example. Three scenarios exist where wildcards come in handy. Of course not.