Lame title, I know.  But I'm pressed for time, so please bear with me

Anyways, I wanted to take a quick second to point out something that is missing from Search in WSS v3 and MOSS 2007: wildcards.  If you already know what a search wildcard is, feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph.  Wildcards are characters you use in a search query to signify that any content can be returned in its position.  So let's say I wanted to find all the .JPG files in a folder on my Windows workstation.  From a search in Windows Explorer within the target folder, I can type "*.JPG", and that query will return all the .JPG files in that folder, regardless of their name.  The asterisk (*) is the wildcard in my query, it represents all characters in the filename of the images.  If I searched for "john*.jpg", that query would only return the files that started with "john" and ended with ".jpg".

Often times in search engines, wildcard functionality is included inherently with your queries.  That means that if you search for ".jpg", the engine will return all records containing that string somewhere in their name, instead of only files explicitly named ".jpg".  This is pretty handy, especially when you don't know exactly what the file you're looking for is named. 

However, the SharePoint search engine in WSS v3 and MOSS 2007 does not use wildcards at all.  It does not implicitly include wildcards in searches, and if your query string reads "*.jpg", it will only look for files named ".jpg".  It will not return all the .JPG files in the search target.  So keep this in mind when you're running your searches.

NOTE: If you really need to use wildcards in your SharePoint searches, there is an alternative available to you.  Mondosoft has made the wildcard functionality of their Ontolica SharePoint search product free to anyone who wants it.  You can get it here: http://www.ontolica.com/Download/Request%20Product.aspx?prod=onwi 

I'd also like to thank Rob Bogue of Thor Projects and Leo Doyle of Mondosoft for pointing out this issue.