Ever since the early days of Twitter when Summize popped up and was bought by Twitter and turned in to search.twitter.com everybody realized the power of real time search on Twitter. It’s one of the main reasons that thee service is what it is today and it allows people to tap in to what people are thinking around the world at any given moment. Most people use the service at it’s very simplest form and type in the word of hash tag that they are looking for and it returns the results you need but just like other search engines there are a lot of additional ways in which you can use Twitter search and we wanted to explore them and give you the complete guide. If Twitter search is something that you are using on a daily basis and you use it to monitor what people say about your brand or to engage in customer service with your brand then it is essential that you take an hour out of your day and learn some of these great ways of vastly improving your Twitter search experience…

Search By Pictures only

“Haiti” twitpic OR yfrog OR post.ly filter:links
One of the things that I like looking at most on Twitter are pictures as I find that with some events (especially sports) they can really give you a different perspective on the story. In the example above the search is running so as you only see a constant stream of pictures coming out of the Haiti disaster. A highly effective way of painting a picture in your head and as you say a picture paints a thousand words.

Find People On Twitter (not technically Twitter search but still useful)

One thing that can be hard to do on Twitter is find the people that you are looking for. You can use Twitter search for a ton of different things but finding people based on their interests is not an easy thing to do. There are a couple of Twitter directories like WeFollow that might help but Tweepsearch is an invaluable tool as it searches through people’s bios and it is amazing how many good contacts and relevant people you can find through this tool.

Search your multiple profiles

to:niallharbison OR to:laurenfisher
It is getting to the stage where a lot of people have multiple twitter accounts (work, business, pleasure etc) and you want to be able to search them all in one go and respond to people without having to do individual searches for each one. In the example above the search will send back any replies mentioning either myself or Lauren so as we never miss anything. You could do this with your brand or people associated with your brand.

Monitoring You Competitors Conversations

from:dellOutlet OR to:dellOutlet
It is easy enough to see what your competitor is saying by running a simple search but you will also want to see what people are replying to them and paint a better picture of how they are actually interacting with their customers. Use the example above and replace the names with the competitor of your choice. (In the example above I have used Dell computers).

Find The Best People + Their Best Links

from:kevinrose filter:links
Some people share great links right? Those same people also share a load of pointless chatter that I have no interest in listening to so this is one of the best ways to just get the quality information. I like the links that Kevin Rose share this simple search lets me scroll through every single link that he shares and thus have an amazing bank of content to read. Again this works with multiple user names so pop 10 great link sharers in there and you’ll have your very own awesome personal feed of great unique content to read.

Have Your Questions Answered

“gmail down” ?
Wouldn’t it be great if all the answers to your questions were out there before you even thought of the question? In the example above I would be able to see if there was a widespread problem with Gmail or if I was just seeing problems myself. The fact that there are only a couple of people asking if Gmail is down in the last couple of hours tells me there is probably no widespread problem. Use the question function to get as create as you like.

Using Hashtags

#hashtags
You’ll often find that conversations around things like breaking news stories, sports events and conferences are assigned a # (this symbol is called a hashtag) and a word that mentions the event. The main reason that this is done is so as you can easily follow a stream of conversation around the event that you are watching. Using the hashtag rather than random words brings lots of people together and ensures that you don’t miss any tweets.

Cut Out The Duplicate Content

“Haiti” -rt -via
You’ll often find that when new stories break on Twitter that you are seeing all the same content over and over again as people Re tweet it and pass it on to each other. Use the example above to take out all the RT’s and Via’s to ensure that you get mostly the new and original content that is breaking on a particular story. You may still get some duplicate content but the chances are you will find lots more new and fresh links this way.

Save Yourself Time In Future

You may find some great searches that you want to keep running for the future and most of the third party apps like Tweetdeck will let you do just that by adding a new column where the search will run continuously. If you are using the Twitter web interface you can simply add the search to your saved searches so as you can access all your searches in the future with one simple click…

Twitter’s Guide

Here is the official list that is provided by Twitter themselves. They also provide advanced search with some simple categories to choose from in a more basic format here.

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