Remove the call to $wpdb->prepare()
:
$result = $wpdb->get_var(
"SELECT DISTINCT meta_value FROM $metatable
WHERE meta_key LIKE '%matchme%'
AND meta_value IS NOT NULL
AND meta_value <> ''"
);
In this case, the $wpdb->prepare()
function is not doing anything. There are no variables holding unknown values, therefore there is no need to sanitize them.
If you did have variables that need sanitizing, you can add a second argument to the function:
$result = $wpdb->get_var(
$wpdb->prepare(
"SELECT DISTINCT meta_value FROM %s
WHERE meta_key LIKE '%matchme%'
AND meta_value IS NOT NULL
AND meta_value <> ''",
$metatable )
);
Relevant links: