What role do quotation marks ('') play in MySQL queries when searching for a specific term in PHP?

Quotation marks in MySQL queries are used to specify string literals. When searching for a specific term in PHP, you should enclose the term you are searching for in single quotes within the query to ensure that MySQL interprets it as a string. This is important to prevent SQL injection attacks and ensure the query works correctly.

$search_term = "example";
$query = "SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE column_name = '$search_term'";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);