Update on the Google asterisk

Further to my earlier posting about the Google asterisk and the missing documents (http://www.ukeig.org.uk/blog/2006/03/googles-asterisk-and-missing-500000.html), I sent off a report to Google about the problem and I have now received a response.

It appears that the use of an asterisk within a phrase to represent a single word has been discontinued. Now, you use it between words without quote marks and it stands in for one or more words. Additionally you can use it after a series of words to fill in the blanks for a query that corresponds to a question. They give the example 'the parachute was invented by *'

They confirm that searches sometimes return "erroneous" estimates for the number of results for a search, which we all knew already. They do not, though, explain why phenol * extraction still only displays 1-2 of 471,000!