Can I use LIKE this way?

[gunmuse]

{          $dead_beat_ads = "Delete from fsearch_temp where fsearchKeyword='$str' and fsearchTime='$time' and fsearchIp='$fbip' and fsearchHost LIKE '%$dbad%' ";       $dead_beat_result = $dbi->query($dead_beat_ads);   }   What I am doing is eliminate "Run of site" advertisers from our network  LIKE EBAY.com  I would rather give free crawler results than to allow this spam advertising anymore.  So I before I develope our XML output of search results to our partners I am going to remove them but since their tracking can change All I want to do is search for them by host  Like ebay.com  and I will pull this out in real time thus all the $time requirements.  This will mean that no matter which of our partners ebay buys advertising from they won't be displayed through our network.  Or if someone buys a commission junciton ad we will pull them out by the host even though the click url may be a qcksrv ad.   So the question is can that % be butted up against the variable or should I put a space in there.   While reading the LIKE on Mysql .com it talks about 2nd position with a space but I didn't know if that meant for the use of %_$dbad_% or if % $dbad % would have it looking for second position stuff.   Thanks Donny Lairson President 29 GunMuse Lane P.O. box 166 Lakewood NM 88254 http://www.gunmuse.com 469 228 2183