You might be tired to see Twitter-related posts every single day but this shouldn’t prevent you from using the tool. To network using Twitter or not – is up to you. There are still many people who just don’t get the very idea of telling others what they are doing. What’s definitely should be taken into account: Twitter is a great marketing tool that can help you understand your audience and keep track of hot trends in your industry.
Now, to do that effectively, let’s look at how to search Twitter properly:
Use Twitter (advanced) search (formerly Summize):
Actually, Twitter advanced search feature is really unique and should not be taken lightly. Among pretty traditional options (exact match, language based, etc), there are quite innovative parameters: search by emotional coloring or sentence semantic structure.
Let’s overview briefly what we can do with Twitter search:
- Word-level search:
- search for exact match: e.g. ["search marketing"];
- search for any of these words: e.g. [search OR marketing];
- exclude any word: e.g. [search marketing -seo];
- search for related discussions (hashtags): [#seo];
- restrict search results to any specific language (adds “&lang=” to the query string).
- A person-related search:
- find threads by a specified Twitter user: [seo from:seosmarty];
- find threads addressed to a specified Twitter user: [WordPress to:jdevalk];
- find Tweets referencing the specified username: [search @mashable].
- Location-specific search:
- find Tweets sent near the specified location: [seo near:seattle];
- find Tweets sent within XX miles of the specified location: [near:NYC within:15mi].
- Date-specific search: find posts sent since / until the specified date (YYYY-MM-DD): [seo since:2008-06-25].
- Emotional color and semantic structure search:
- finds Tweets with positive / negative attitude: [icann :)], [mccain :(];
- search for questions: [elections ?].
- Search for useful resources – i.e. links to related pages: [seo filter:links].
Use Twitter Search Tools:
- Hashtags.org (as the name suggests) keeps track of all twittered hashtags (#). The tool also trends each one and shows you most popular ones:
- Twitseek searches for URLs twittered along with the keyword.
- Tweet Scan is a simple Twitter search tool (updates results every second);
- Twit Scoop searches and tracks the keyword-related conversations. It will also show you the trend for your keyword popularity on Twitter:
- TwitStat is another Twitter search analytics that not only searches but shows you the query trend.
- FireFox addons:
- Be sure to install Twitter search plugin (bottom of the page);
- Take advantage of this Greasemonkey Script that adds both keyword and people search to your Twitter home page sidebar.
![Twitter Search [Greasemonkey Script]](http://www.searchenginejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/twitter-search-script.jpg "Twitter Search [Greasemonkey Script]")
I use http://tweetag.com/ I think it’s really powerful and user-friendly
Wow… I thought I knew what I was doing and was somewhat satisfied with it. I had no clue about most of this stuff; thanks for sharing!
I think Twitter is powerful but there is def. a strategy on how to use it.
Great post thanks for the info.
Yes, Tweetag is also a really powerful tool http://tweetag.com/
Great summary. I am sure *most* folks on Twitter do not yet realize power of search.twitter. I’m frustrated we’ve not been able to search people’s bios @ Twitter for over 2 months now. Any suggestions on that front?
great stuff ann! Stumbled!
Hey, thanks for the post…
great tips. thanks. and thanks for mentioning that Greasemonkey script. Those can be quite handy.
Here’s a new one I wrote to show the top search trends directly on your Twitter home page:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/39353
Wow Ann this is pretty cool. I use twitter search all the time but didn’t realize all the different search options. I’m sure this will come in very handy.
If someone can figure out to to do a timezone offset with the Twitter advanced search I’ll immediately PayPal you $50.
Doesn’t have to be native… can be php magpie or lastRss solution too.
TL
P.S. Contact via this link… http://jamtopia.com/contact/
Thanks Ann, I’m relatively new to Twitter and didn’t realize how deep the Twitter search can go. Cool Greasemonkey script too!
Hi,
Thanks for providing such great tips. It is really useful for a Twitter newbie like me.
Thanks , nice post.
Though I was looking for people advanced search, and this is not exactly answer that.
Good, well written article. Crsip and to the point. We are ourselves as Social Media Management company. However Ann Smarty’s tips are comprehensive.
Has anyone tried Firefox’s add-on plugin using which one can tweet from the address bar. Really cool and useful
Nice. Has anybody an idea why this doesn’t work [search @milieunet] and what to do about it.
Twitter Search is one of the best tools around, however I have frequently seen it fail with searched involving finding keywords from a specific person, and generally searching inside a person’s timeline usually shows no results. Too bad because otherwise it would be the perfect search tool for Twitter
Great article, I have understood much better what you can and cannot do with Twitter search. I have also tried it myself and published a short article on my blog. I have also madre reference to your post.