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