Learn Search Operators for Twitter Search

Real time search is one vital aspect to social media marketing giant Twitter’s current success, but do you currently get the most out of it? While we might not think much of Twitter’s search capabilities beyond real-time results, their search does offer the same advanced functions mainstream search engines use. These functions will be crucial for you to find the most relevant search results, since real-time search results might mean a good portion of irrelevant tweets you need to sort through. Of course, if you find that typing in search operators directly into the search box isn’t for you, Twitter offers you their Advanced Search page.

Exclusion Operator
You can exclude tweets that contain certain keywords to make your search results more relevant. You can have as many exclusion operators as you want to really narrow down your search results. One example is “Cybertegic -Social Media Marketing.”

Inclusion Operator
Just the opposite, if you require a certain keyword in your search, use the “plus” operator. An example is: “Cybertegic +Social Media Marketing.”

Specific Dates
You can use the “since”/”until” operator to get people’s reactions about a subject starting from a certain date. For example, if you want to look up social media marketing results since November 5, 2009, your search would be: “Social Media Marketing since:2009-11-05.”

Right Author
While we can use the “@” feature to find relevant tweets from a user, you can also use the “from” or “to” operator. So, you can see all the tweets from us by using “from:Cybertegic” or the ones directed at us with “to:Cybertegic.”

Hashtags
As we’ve mentioned before, hashtags are an unofficial way of tagging your tweet. If a big event happens on a certain day, there is usually an “official” hashtag being used to help filter all the tweets. One recurring one is “#followfriday” if you want to look for interesting Twitter accounts recommended by a follower.

Of course, you can use all these operators to narrow down your search if necessary. Hopefully these operators will make your search experience on a social media marketing site more productive and useful.

Written by: Daisy K.