Regular expressions

You can use comparison operators to search and filter keywords, but sometimes they are not enough. For advanced search use regular expressions.

What is a regular expression

Regular expression is a sequence of characters that define a search pattern. Such patterns are used by string searching algorithms for "find" or "find and replace" operations, or for input validation.

How to use regular expressions

You can use regular expressions on the following pages: Keywords (Advanced mode) and Rank Tracker.

  • Keywords

  • Rank Tracker

How to use regular expressions on the Keywords page:
  1. Move to the Keywords (Advanced mode) page.
  2. Select all keywords or a keyword group in the left menu.
  3. Press (or double-click a title).
  4. Type a regular expression in the selected column.
  5. Press Enter.
How to use regular expressions on the Rank tracker page:
  1. Move to the Rank tracker page.
  2. Press .
  3. Type a regular expression.
  4. Press Enter.

Regular expressions syntax

Most characters in regular expressions are interpreted literally. It means that an expression 'abc' would match letters a, b and c. However, there's a group of special characters that match special conditions: the beginning and the end of line, any number or any character, etc. To escape a special character, put a '' before it.

Important!
You should write all regular expressions between '/' characters.

Special character Legend Example Structure Comment
. Any character /^.ill$/ ^ — start of keyword
. — any character
ill — letters that should be after the first character
$ — end of keyword
Search 4-letter keywords that start with any character and end with 'ill', for example, 'bill', 'fill', 'hill', 'mill', 'pill'.
^ Start of keyword