Is there a way to do searches only using part of a word? If I only know part of a person’s name, for example “Mc”, how would i phrase this in DA? with a asterix, or a question mark? Or is it not possible (of course, I’d have a lot more than just Mc and the wildcard operator in the search, so that I don’t get 1000 McDonald’s pages.) 
That’s possible by using the ~ operator. But only if you’re scanning a list of known sites or as a secondary search term.