By Thomas Baekdal. Follow him @baekdal.
Twitter Search is just amazing because it can give you real-time feedback about pretty much everything. That is, if you know how to look for it. Here is how:
Before we start I need to point out that both TweetDeck and Seesmic (my two favorite Twitter apps – with Seesmic being the #1) allows you to open special search panels, allowing you to “follow” a search term, instead of a person.
This is a great way to keep on top of things.
The Secrets…
1: Get up to speed with all the latest buzz
The primary way that I keep up-to-speed on social networking is to follow a social networking search. For instance, let say you want to get all the new links about social media, not including the many re-tweets that people make.
Simply search for:
“social web” OR “social media” OR “social news” -rt filter:links
2: Find all the people who are not talking about you directly
Another thing you might want to do is to find all the people who talks about you (or your product) but isn’t including you directly. E.g. If I want to find all the people who mention my name, but aren’t replying to me.
Simply search for:
Baekdal -to:baekdal -from:baekdal -@baekdal
Note: You can also find everyone who links to you via BackTweets
3: Get all reactions across multiple twitter profiles
Another thing you might want to do is to get all the replies and mentions that refer to you, across multiple twitter profiles. For instance, I have 7 twitter profiles and I would really like to see everything in one place.
Simply search for:
to:baekdal OR to:baekdalarticles OR to:baekdaldesign OR to:baekdalnotes OR to:baekdal24hours (etc…)
BTW: Seesmic will do this automatically in the reply panel (which is one of the main reason why I prefer it over other Twitter apps).
4: Follow what people are saying about your competitors
You also may want to follow not only what your competitors are saying on Twitter, but also how people respond to them. All you need to do is to simply search for:
from:competitor OR from:competitor
E.g. If your competitor is H&M (@handm), you can search for
from:handm OR to:handm
5: Only follow links from certain people
One of the problem of following people on Twitter is that you don’t get to decide what to hear. Sometimes you just want to know about the links that they share, and not hear all the chit-chat.
Let’s say that you only want to see the links that I share, then you simply search from:
from:baekdal filter:links
6: Only get the new info about a topic
One of the most common way to use Twitter search is to search for hashtags or product names. But the results are very often filled with identical tweets.
So if you want to search for anything about ‘American Airlines’ but without the re-tweeted stuff
“american airlines” -rt -via
7: Find all shared pictures about a topic.
It can be really interesting to see only the pictures that people post about a certain topic or event. During this year’s Le Mans, I was continually following every picture that people tweeted. You do this by simply searching for:
“le mans” twitpic OR yfrog OR post.ly OR twitgoo OR pikchur filter:links
BTW: Another way to search for images is to use Twicsy
Have you figured out any other ways to use Twitter Search that you’d like to share? How about trying these above techniques and letting us know what you think, in the comments?
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@ecomind
Great article here Thomas.
I mostly use the search option through Tweetdeck. Not using Seesmic, might have to try that out.
Twitter Search is a great tool to find valuable niche info.
Article is bookmarked. And I will tweet/retweet
Cheers..
@_JD_
#3 is a great tip for TweetDeck users!
Cheers
P.S. Restrict your search to people talking about your niche locally…
golf near:Melbourne within:100km
golf near:Chicago within:100mi
@TwitTipsCenter
I already knew these stuff, but nice to see it shared here
Personally I always try to find people who are retweeting my posts, and talking about me in an indrect way.. Because they can be a very loyal readers since they found me interesting!
@chucksimmins
I would just add the other retweet abbreviation -R/T
@igomogul
Thank you for posting these tips, Thomas. #2 and #4 will be quite useful to us!
Greg @ iGoMogul
@Penguin
Twitter search would be a lot more useful if it wasn’t limited to searching only the last 7 days. It used to go back months.
Jeremy
@plaingerlaine
I am going to definitely use twitter search more often. Thank you for these tips!
@baekdal
iGoMogul, Glad to be of service
TwitterTips, Exactly. And, it often tells you what people really think about you.
@alexschleber
Props. This is too strange, I just posted an Advanced Search article including some of the same Twitter tips this Monday. See for yourself:
http://businessmindhacks.com/post/warning-before-you-do-anything-else-search
@baekdal
Alex, Good article too!
@phaoloo
They are actually basic stuff, but you combine them and smash them up. Nice secrets
@arvindnatarajan
Thanks for the nice list of search filters! I’m finding it very useful.
@freerangemom
Localize conversations
If you want to find out what people in your geographic community are saying on a topic, use advanced search (http://search.twitter.com/advanced). Enter your keyword and under PLACES identify the name of your town and what radius you want to search within.
@fixphoto
Searching specific conversations within your niche on twitter is the best way to build a community. It came in real time result, real people online. I love that.
Can anyone please tell me how to search for a keyword in bio? I know it can be done from ‘Find People’ area — http://twitter.com/invitations/find_on_twitter . But is it possible to make that bio search from normal search area — http://search.twitter.com/? It will be great help if anyone can give the solution
@mordy
If you have a Mac, nambu is awesome (www.nambu.com) – it’s a client that also allows live keyword searches, and it looks and feels just like Apple’s Mail app. In fact, a live search shows up just like a mailbox.
nice “not so secret” tips. thx
Yup one should know these search tips for eg: People doing affiliate stuff with dreamhost can
just search “hosting”or related terms to search those clients who are taking about hosting n
than give them their promo codes….& it really works using these advanced search feature is still even better …
cheers…………
@mrassis
Great article Thomas !!! Very useful. Thank you for these tips!
Cheers,
@adelemcalear
Baraja Re: Can anyone please tell me how to search for a keyword in bio?
I use http://tweepsearch.com to search bios. It will look at descriptions, usernames, locations and URLs contained in profile bios. It’s a great app.
@hivesusan
Great article – thanks for the tips. Unlike most of the people above, I had no idea you could eliminate the RT from search, so I really appreciate it!
@UABPaul
I really like to use Tweetbeep (http://tweetbeep.com/) for searching Twitter. It runs automated searches and emails me any results.
@aussiewebmaster
Great post – should be part of a Twitter Hacks book
@vindee
Ah the power of twitter. I use tweetdeck too & reading your article gives me a sense of how much more useful twitter can be. I have to admit I barely use it for anything more than twiterring. Thank you for the insight. Cheers
@helpmerick
Just downloaded Seesmic. Hadn’t seen that yet. Only been a Twitter user about five or six months so am learning the ropes and this helps sift through the clutter.
@sergioraposo
Great article indeed. Thanks.
@LoPaul
Wow, great article. Just turning me on to backtweets.com was awesome and the search tips will really come in handy. Thanks!
This is an excellent article. I love what all we can discover in the Twitter data. Perhaps the most powerful, general purpose tool built to date for this purpose is TipTop at FeelTipTop.com You can easily find all the things detailed above and more when you do searches there.
@brad_j_davis
Some great tips on using Twitter, thanks for the info.
@matthewbennett
Does anybody know how to search for 1) the links the people I’m following have posted overnight and 2) what have they said about “xxxx xxx”?
@daepunt
I think under point 4:
from:competitor ORfrom:competitorshould be:
from:competitor OR to:competitor
as you point out in the example.
Great post! Very helpful
@pharaoh
Great tips Thomas!
Is it possible to eliminate double users from Twitter search? If few users show a few times in search, how to eliminate them all? (btw we don’t known they @id)
@henrytheartist
Thanks for the great info……I’ve book marked this page.