Regex Starts With and Ends With in Search Console (^ and $)

In the last lesson we wrote our first simple regex with |, meaning "or", and we learned to use () to group several options together, like (price|cost|how much). Search Console brought back any query containing one of those words.

But today we have a different problem. Say you have these queries:

• iphone
• iphone 17
• iphone price
• best iphone
• buy iphone
• iphone uk

If you use iphone, almost everything with the word iphone shows up, whether it's at the start, the middle or the end. But what if your question was: I want only the queries that start with iphone? Or the queries that end with iphone? Or the query that is just iphone, with nothing before or after it?

Here, just writing iphone isn't enough. We need to start controlling where the text is. And that's what we'll learn today.

The first symbol: ^

The ^ symbol means "the start of the text". So if you write ^iphone, you're saying: the text has to start with iphone. Let's try:

The word iphone really is in "best iphone" and "buy iphone", but not at the start.

An example with question words

You have: how to choose a laptop, how to buy a laptop, best laptop for work, what is the best laptop, how to check my laptop specs. And you want: every query that starts with "how".

What if there's more than one start?

Say you want the queries that start with how, can or why. We can use what we learned in the last lesson:

So the whole regex means: the text has to start with how, can or why.

Focus on the last one: "laptop overheating why" has the word "why" in it, but not at the start. So it didn't show up.

The second symbol: $

Now the opposite idea. The $ symbol means "the end of the text". If you write iphone$, it means: the text has to end with iphone.

Because the last thing in the query has to be iphone.

A clear SEO example: say your site targets several countries, and you want the queries that end with uk:

The last one has uk in it, but at the start, not the end.

What if we use ^ and $ together?

This brings us to a very important idea. If you write ^iphone$, read it as: the start of the text, iphone, the end of the text. So there's nothing before iphone, and nothing after it. Which means the whole text has to be exactly iphone.

And that's the first important difference that has to be clear in your head.

The difference between the three

We have 3 patterns, and each one is a different question. Let's try them on the same data:

If that difference is clear to you, you've understood the most important part of the lesson.

So why does an exact match matter in SEO?

You might say: why would I need a query to be exactly one word? There are many uses. For example, you have a brand called "nova", and you want to know how the query "nova" itself performs. If you use nova, you might get:

• nova
• nova store
• buy nova
• nova uk
• best nova product

But if you only want the brand word:

Now you're isolating exactly one query. That's very useful when you're trying to separate a pure brand query from a brand + modifier.

The difference matters: nike alone says "the person typed just the brand name". nike plus something says "the person mentioned the brand in some form". And that difference can matter in the analysis.

Now something new: special characters

So far we've used ^ $ | (). These aren't ordinary characters; they're regex symbols with a meaning. Say you want to search for "example.com". Does the dot in regex really mean a dot? The answer: no. In regex, the dot . has a special meaning: roughly "any one character". So if you write example.com, you're not literally saying "example, then a dot, then com". You're saying "example, then any character, then com".

Let's see it with an example. The regex a.b can match:

Because . means "any one character".

So what if I want an actual dot?

That's when we use \., meaning: I don't want the dot's special regex meaning; I want the dot character itself. For example, example\.com means "example.com" literally. The \ symbol is called an escape, but as we agreed, the name isn't the most important thing. Think of it like this: don't treat the character after me as a regex symbol; treat it as an ordinary character.

Why does this matter in Search Console? Because you'll work with URLs a lot. For example, if you want a precise pattern for a domain, notice \. instead of ., because the dot is a real part of the domain name. Don't try to memorize a big list of symbols: we'll learn each symbol when we need it.

Applying it to pages instead of queries

So far most examples have been queries. Let's start seeing that the same thinking works on pages. You want every page inside the blog:

Now ^ has become a tool for understanding the site's structure, not just a symbol we memorized. Another example, the products section:

A common mistake: I wanted one URL and only used the start of the text

Say you want the page https://example.com/blog/ exactly. If you write ^https://example\.com/blog/, these also show up:

Because you told it "start with this path", but you didn't say "and end here". If you want only that page:

A very important example: the question word itself

You have: how to choose a laptop, how to buy a laptop, how to find a laptop's price, laptop how to choose one, best laptop.

That difference matters, because you're trying to describe the shape of a query, not just whether a word is in it.

Putting lessons 1 and 2 together

You want the queries that start with one of: how, can, why, when. We use:

Notice we've started building regex out of small ideas we already understand.

An example that needs a bit of focus

We have the regex ^(iphone|samsung)$. Let's take it apart: the start of the text, then iphone or samsung, then the end of the text. So: the whole text is just iphone or samsung.

If you understood that example without memorizing it, we're on the right track.

The practical test

You have: how to choose a macbook, can a macbook run windows, best macbook for programming, macbook how to reset, macbook, macbook pro, buy macbook, why is the macbook so expensive.

A thinking test

If you want every query that starts with the word "best", what's the first question you need to ask? Not "how do I write the regex?" but: "do I care about the word best being anywhere, or about the shape of a query that starts with it?" Because best and ^best answer two different questions.

Before the next lesson

So far we have |, (), ^, $ and \.. But more important than the symbols, you can now tell apart "contains", "starts with", "ends with" and "equals the whole text".

In the next lesson we'll face a completely different problem. We won't even know the word we're looking for. We'll ask, for example: I want the queries made of 5 words or more, or 7 words or more, or 10 words or more. And that's where, for the first time, we'll build a regex based on the shape of the query and its number of words, not on words we know in advance.