regex_match

Regular expressions is a powerful language for matching patterns of partial words, whole words, or even multiple words. While basic regular expressions are straightforward to use, you can create complex expressions that are powerful but may be difficult to predict and debug --- and may be difficult for other people in your organization to understand.

So the best practice is: start with the basics, and add complexity only if you have no other choice.

Regular expression syntax

Here's a list of the operators and syntax you may find useful when using regular expressions in Search Ads 360:

Wildcards

.	Matches any single character (letter, number or symbol)	goo.gle matches gooogle, goodgle, goo8gle
*	Matches zero or more of the previous item	The default previous item is the previous character. goo*gle matches gooogle, goooogle
+	Matches one or more of previous item	gooo+gle matches goooogle, but not google.
?	Matches zero or one of the previous item	labou?r matches both labor and labour
|	Inclusive "or"	a|b matches a or b, or both a and b

Anchors

^	Line starts with	^site matches site but not mysite
$	Line ends with	site$ matches site but not sitescan

Grouping

()	Capturing group	Thank(s|you) matches both Thanks and Thankyou
[]	Set or range of characters in any order	[ogl]+ matches google,  goooogle, or logic
-	Expresses a range of characters	[A-Z] creates a list for the uppercase English alphabet

Other

\	Escape special characters	mysite\.com keeps the dot from being a wildcard
\s	Space character	\s+.* matches one or more whitespace followed by zero or more characters
\d	Digit	\d65\d matches "265" not "256"
\w	Word character (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _)	$\w matches any string starting with a word character, such as "Campaign" but not "@Campaign"
\b	Word boundary	\bcity\b matches " city " not "scarcity"