# Searching and too common words **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [June 14, 2007, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-and-too-common-words/407995 "2007-06-14T13:59:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2007, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-and-too-common-words/407995/1 "2007-06-14T13:59:25Z")
Sometimes upon submitting a search, I get the following message: > [@](#): > > The following words are either very common, too long, or too short and were not included in your search: Is there a list we can access that shows the words that are considered too common to allow searches on? I can understand words like _ **this, that, the** _ , but recently I tried to search on, among other words, _ **welcome** _, and it was disallowed. I cannot search on my user name either, as \*\*\*itself \*\* \* is disallowed. Is this list at the discretion of the webmaster, or does vBulletin have an arbitrary list built in? Or is it dynamic, adding words that get searched on too often? ---
**Author:** ![FatBaldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecd19e/32.png) [@FatBaldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FatBaldGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2007, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-and-too-common-words/407995/2 "2007-06-14T14:10:04Z")
A trick I have found to get around this (for both short words and common words) is to put an asterisk(\*) after the word, which will then search for all words that start with those letters. Not so helpful with words like “the” and “and” (why would you search on them anyway?), but it should get you around “itself” and others.