Google Adds Regex to Google Search Console

The addition of regex to Google Search Console is pretty nice, especially for companies who have brand names or products that can be typed in multiple ways e.g. using the word “and” or an “&” symbol.

For those of you who have been seeing all the posts about this and are wondering what the hubbub is about, Regular expressions, also known as regex, is a way to do an advanced search and replace for strings of words or characters.

Regex is particularly useful in GSC because it allows you to filter multiple search term queries by defining a regex filter.

For example, let’s say you sell peanut butter and jelly sandwiches online (if you do, send me a link, I could go for one right now).

You could set a query: “peanut butter and jelly|peanut butter & jelly|pb&j” that captures all the search term variations of peanut butter and jelly in your GSC reporting.

About the Author

Matt Chiera

Matt Chiera is the Founder and Principal Consultant at Ice Nine Online, a Chicago-based B2B digital marketing agency he established in 2014. Over more than a decade, he has helped clients generate millions of dollars in revenue across SEO, paid media, web development, and marketing strategy. Before founding Ice Nine Online, Matt served as a Director at Perfect Search Media, one of Chicago's pioneering search marketing firms. He has taught digital marketing courses at the Digital Professional Institute, published Digital Marketers Sound Off (ranked the number one Web Marketing book on Amazon), and holds formal training from the University of Chicago and Stanford University's Technology Entrepreneurship program. Ice Nine Online has earned recognition through the dotCOMM, MUSE, and Web Excellence Awards.

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