Regex to find a match word/phrase in returned data?

Regex to find a match word/phrase in returned data?

Okay, so this is my code thus far.

function(data) {       
     var output = '<div class="gs-title">';
     $.each(data.data, function(i, article) {
       output += '<a href=" https://kb.mysite.com/help/pdfexport/id/'+ article.id + '">' + article.name + '</a>';
     });
     output += '</div>';
     $("##resultarea").replaceWith(output);
   });

When the data is returned from the request, I want to highlight the search word that's found in the paragraph by putting it in a separate class. I found this regex: 

 pattern = new RegExp('(>[^<.]*)(' + what + ')([^<.]*)','g'),
However, when I test this  http://www.regexpal.com/ site, it does not work. I want to be able to highlight the word anywhere it appears/found on the paragraph/summary texts.