8 Tips on How to use Twitter search effectively

Twitter search is one place where you can make the most of twitter, and use it in many ways, some of which are:

• Finding new friends talking about something you too are interested in
• Finding clients/customers for your company
• Searching for feedback on companies
• Get involved into discussions
• Searching for tweets related to the most popular topics aka trends
• Search for tweets from local areas to filter out any news
• Hashtags for certain events/news categorization

So, to get more involved in twitter and do the best with twitter search, here are a few good tips to use:

> Use hashtags:

Searching for something with a hashtag will filter out relevant tweets rather than just the keyword without a hashtag. Hashtag has become a trend to use these days and people use them to have their tweets easily searchable for many keywords.

Like if you search for tweets related to some particular event going on, like Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference, no one is sure how to search for that in particular but the better way is #wwdc which is one of the hashtags used by most of the people tweeting about it. This hashtag when searched in twitter would give tweets related only to that conference and not everything in random.

Thanks to @rmilana, i got to know that hashtags with more than 30 characters are not being indexed into twitter search. Here is the test we did and found that they really aren’t in the twitter search -

> Combine words into phrase:

When you search for a couple words together to make a phrase, the search tool displays tweets which has both, or any one word in it.
Eg. Search for Nokia N97 and you would see tweets that are not only about Nokia N97 but about Nokia, or N97 separately too. So to combine, search it as “Nokia N97″ as a phrase. This will limit your search to tweets having the entire phrase with the words together in it.

Like searching for Nokia N97 gives results like:

@randomuser: Hey i just bought a Nokia 5310 Xpressmusic (This has only Nokia in it)
@anotheruser: Should i go for N96 or N97? which is better? (This does not have Nokia word in it, but just N97)
But searching for “Nokia N97″ will give results like:
@someuser: Hey here is a review of Nokia N97 that my friend just wrote: Link (Nokia N97 together in the tweet)

> Search for replies to other users:

Not always a good practice, but when you are competing against some other company in the same field, its important to keep track of how well they are performing and what kind of feedback they are getting. If they are on twitter, just search for @TheirUserName in Twitter Search and you will see what all feedback they got from members, or any suggestions that have been made by people. This can help in assessment on how you can build your company.

Also, if you have any favorite twitter users and want to check what all others talk to them, or share with them, the best way is by searching with @username in the search box. Everything is displayed except the protected updates from people whom you are not following.

> Shortcuts for searching about people:

Type: @sizzler_chetan : Twitter will search for: tweets referring my Twitter handle.
Type: from:sizzler_chetan : Twitter will search for: tweets from sizzler_chetan.
Type: to:sizzler_chetan : Twitter will search for: all tweets directed at sizzler_chetan Those tweets which have the username at the starting of it.

> Use the advanced search:

The advanced search can be used to search through various options like location based search, time based search for a particular location. Also, you can search for tweets with attitudes based on smilies. Like positive, negative and questioning attitude. And actually the advanced search page can be used for most of the tipcs given above, but still always opening it and searching is too far, so keeping the above tips in mind is better.

> Location searches for particular keywords:

For example, search for “raining” near:”Hyderabad” in twitter search and it would localize the search in and around the Hyderabad city for tweets talking about the rains. You can also limit this search to a particular radius around a location.
Eg. “raining” near:”Hyderabad” within:100mi

> Search for links related to a niche:

To search for tweets that contain links and are talking about something in particular, type this:
keyword filter:links (keyword is the word you want the tweets to be related to)
Eg. if am searching for WSJ links, i search for WSJ filter:links and every tweet having a link and keyword WSJ in it, would be displayed in the search results.

> Search for pictures posted through twitpic etc.:

Pictures are shared on twitter normally through Twitpic, post.ly, twitgoo or pikchur etc. sites and searching for pictures can be done, by typing the keyword and the sites as below -
“flower” twitpic OR yfrog OR post.ly OR twitgoo OR pikchur filter:links
“flower” is the keyword i used as an example. You can replace the keyword with anything you want to search for in pictures.

There are many other search engines especially made for Twitter to search better, which i would list out soon. Any more tips you would like to share? Post it in comments!
Follow me on twitter @sizzler_chetan

Here are other good twitter based articles worth reading:
How to not get marked as twitter spammer
How to restore deleted/suspended twitter account
Best twitter tips for Nokia users

And here are a few other twitter tips!