Here is how to find substrings in google spreadsheet.

Say you have a long string in cell AJ13 and want to see if the substring Obama in China is in there. This is how you do it.

=IF( ISNUMBER( FIND( "Obama in China" ; AJ13 ) ) ; "YES" ; "NOT SURE" )

You can nest it for more interesting result. (But not too long…)

=IF( ISNUMBER( FIND( "Obama in China" ; AJ13 ) ) ; "China" ; IF( ISNUMBER( FIND( "Obama in India" ; AJ13 ) ) ; "India" ; IF( ISNUMBER( FIND( "Obama in Europe" ; AJ13 ) ) ; "Europe" ; IF( ISNUMBER( FIND( "Obama in Africa" ; AJ13 ) ) ; "Africa" ; "NOT SURE" ) ) ) )

That is 4-level deep, basically to start a new if-statement at the else section.
=IF( ISNUMBER( FIND( “Obama in China” ; AJ13 ) ) ; “China” ; IF( ISNUMBER( FIND( “Obama in India” ; AJ13 ) ) ; “India” ; IF( ISNUMBER( FIND( “Obama in Europe” ; AJ13 ) ) ; “Europe” ; IF( ISNUMBER( FIND( “Obama in Africa” ; AJ13 ) ) ; “Africa” ; “NOT SURE” ) ) ) )

ref: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/YhIKnBsoXsc