Twitter Advanced Search

Twitter advanced search is a powerful tool that you need to use!

Are you tracking sales opportunities for your business?

Are you tracking conversations related to your competitors?

Social media is ideal for listening in on conversations.  You can carry out market research or find potential leads or partners.  But there is so much noise that pinpointing exactly what you’re looking for is impossible.

Isn’t it?

Well, actually, it isn’t.

Not many people seem to know about Twitter’s Advanced Search, but it can do all of the above, and more.  If you want to find tweets sent to the New York Times in the first week of January that mention snow and have a positive sentiment, you can do so!

Even though that’s quite a random example, you can start to see the possibilities of this advanced search.  It can help you to understand how customers are reacting to your brand or what people think about the latest news from your industry.

So, that’s what you can do with Twitter’s Advanced Search. Let’s now look at how you do it.

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How to use Twitter Advanced Search

Advanced Search functionality in Twitter makes it easy to drill down into your search results to find exactly what you are looking for. To start, go to https://twitter.com/search-advanced. This is what you will see:  

The Twitter Advanced Search page
The Twitter Advanced Search page

 

The Words Section

Let’s start with the top section of the form. This is what it looks like:  

The 'Words' section of the Twitter Advanced Search form
The ‘Words’ section of the Twitter Advanced Search form

 

                  • All of these words: When you enter words into this box, Twitter searches for tweets that contain them all, e.g. “Restaurant Boston” (without the “”).
                • This exact phrase: Twitter searches for exact matches here, so if you enter “hairdresser in London”, you will only see results with those words in that order.
                • Any of these words: You might want to enter different names for the same thing here, or make sure all your brand options are covered, such as “#razorsocial @razorsocial @iancleary”. This will find tweets that contain any of those terms.
                • None of these words: You can exclude words from your search so, if there are irrelevant results that always come up when you search for your brand name, you can get rid of them.
                • These hashtags: Search for tweets that include certain hashtags.
                • Written in: Choose the language of the tweets

 

                Each of these is useful, but the real power comes when you combine them.  You can easily do this with the Advanced Search page. So, if you want some social media quotes that do not include infographics, you can use the fields, below, to narrow down your search:  

Search for tweets that contain the words "social media" and the hashtag "quote" and that don't include "infographic"
Search for tweets that contain the words “social media” and the hashtag “quote” and that don’t include “infographic”

 

Top Tip

Do you want to find conversations on Twitter?  If so, you can search only for tweets without links. Equally, if you want resources, you can search only for tweets that include links. To do this, enter “http” in either the ‘None of these words’ (for tweets without links) or the ‘All of these words’ (for tweets with links) fields.  

The People Section

The next section on the Advanced Search form is ‘People’.  This helps you to search for tweets relating to particular Twitter profiles.  

Specify people to search for on Twitter
Specify people to search for on Twitter

 

                  • From these accounts: Twitter will display results from a username you enter here.
                • To these accounts: Twitter will show tweets that were directed at a particular user.
                • Mentioning these accounts: The results will show tweets mentioning specific accounts.

 

 

Places and Dates Sections

In Twitter Advanced Search, you can choose to search for tweets sent from particular places, in a particular timeframe. So, you can search for tweets that have mentioned your brand from the date of your most recent campaign launch.  

Search for tweets by date
Search for tweets by date

 

In the same way, if you want to find tweets that were sent before a set date, you can do this, too. Click on the ‘from’ or the ‘to’ field box and a calendar pops up.  Choose the dates for your search there.  

The “Other” Section

This section lets you get even more specific about the tweets you want to see in your search results.  

Use sentiment analysis, search for questions, and include or exclude retweets
Use sentiment analysis, search for questions, and include or exclude retweets

 

Sentiment analysis is about detecting how people feel about the topic they are tweeting about.  Here, in Twitter Advanced Search, you can choose to search for only tweets that are positive, or only tweets that are negative. You can also search for tweets that contain questions.  

This is useful if you are looking for leads and want to prove your brand is helpful and offers great customer service: find questions about your products or keywords and answer them! Finally, you can choose whether to include retweets in your search results.

If you carry out your search and the results are overwhelmed by retweets, you might want to make sure this box is unchecked. On the other hand, if you really want to see which tweets are creating buzz, seeing retweets could be useful to gauge popularity.  

Tying it all together

When you are carrying out an Advanced Twitter Search, you can fill in as many of these fields as you want.  The more you fill in, the more narrow your search will be. For example, here, we looked for tweets in English about Twitter tools that did not mention Facebook.  

When I want to search my tweets or someone else’s the results go back to 2014.

An advanced Twitter search looking for tweets about Twitter tools, sent in 2014, that are positive
An advanced Twitter search looking for tweets about Twitter tools, sent in 2014, that are positive

 

Search Results

When you hit ‘search’, the first results you will be taken to show what Twitter calls ‘Top Tweets’, so if you want to see every tweet that fits the bill, click ‘All’ at the top of the page.   top all Twitter tools Facebook lang en since 2014 01 01 until 2014 12 31 Twitter Search     You can also narrow down the search to show only tweets from people you follow, by clicking here:  

See only tweets from people you follow
See only tweets from people you follow

 

Now, you can drill down into your search even further! You can click on people, photos, videos, news or timelines on the left-hand side of the screen. You can find Twitter accounts that fit your search by choosing ‘People’.  You can find tweets with images by clicking ‘Photos’, tweets with video links by clicking ‘Videos’, and so on.  

 

See image-related results for your search
See image-related results for your search

 

Top Tip

When you have found the perfect combination of search terms to exclude and include, click ‘save’ in the top right-hand corner so you can easily access the same search again.

saveTwitter tools Facebook lang en since 2014 01 01 until 2014 12 31 Twitter Photos Search
For handiness make sure you save your search

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What’s next?

As you can see the Twitter support for search is quite good.

What will you use Twitter Advanced Search to find out?  Have you used it before?

 

Magnifying glass icon courtesy of Shutterstock


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