One of Twitter’s most useful features is also one of the most difficult to locate.
Ironically, Twitter’s advanced search is difficult to find. Many people are taken aback by the fact that it exists.
This is most likely due to the fact that the average Twitter user is satisfied with the service’s basic search bar.
But, aren’t you here because you’re dissatisfied with the basics?
You want to delve a little deeper. Perhaps you’d like to go back in time and see what was trending on Twitter on a specific date.
Or maybe you want to see everything someone has said on Twitter about a specific topic.
For this, Twitter has a built-in search function.
Its entire archive of public tweets is searchable, so if you use the right filters, you can find anything you’re looking for.
Want to see how people reacted on Twitter when Google made a major algorithm change? This article will show you how to do it.
Want to look back at your company’s first tweet to see how far you’ve come? We’ll also go over how to do that.
You’ll need to use Twitter’s advanced search functionality to look for tweets from a specific date range.
Continue reading to find out how advanced search differs from standard search, as well as some examples of advanced search in action.
How to Make the Most of Twitter’s Advanced Search
The advanced search feature on Twitter extends beyond the standard search bar, allowing you to run highly specific queries with custom parameters.
Visit Twitter’s advanced search page to use this feature.
On the web-based version of Twitter, clicking that link will open advanced search in a pop-over window.
Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the pop-over window to find tweets from a specific date.
You’ll see fields with options to add dates to your search, as shown in the image below.
You can specify a range of dates or a single date.
You can narrow down your search by using any of Twitter’s other advanced search options in addition to searching by date.
There are a variety of options available, including:
- Words used in tweets.
- Exact phrases used in tweets.
- Hashtags used in tweets.
- Tweets from a specific account.
- Accounts mentioned in tweets.
- Tweets with links only.
- Amount of engagement (i.e., tweets with a minimum number of replies/likes/retweets).
Here are some examples of searches that have been conducted using these filters.
Find Your First Tweets, for example
Let’s look at an example of a query that includes several advanced search filters.
Long-time Twitter users occasionally reminisce about their first tweets and the level of engagement they received.
With that said, we’re about to take a trip down memory lane to look at some of Search Engine Journal’s very first tweets.
First, as shown below, we must add our Twitter handle to the accounts filter.
Read Integrating Twitter Into Your Social Media Marketing Plan: Here’s Gawdo.com’s insightful guide.
Next, we’ll add a date filter.
We’ll use the date on our Twitter profile that shows when we first signed up for the service.
We’ll create a date range until the end of the year just for fun, so we can see all of our tweets from our first few months on Twitter.
Note that you must enter a value for the date, month, and year, or the date filter will be ignored by Twitter.
Now all that’s left is to press the big “Search” button and wait for the results.
That’s all there is to it, folks.
Our very first tweet was a news story about a Yahoo-Twitter ad partnership.
And none of our first tweets received any sort of response.
What a difference a generation makes.
Find Tweets With Specific Keywords From Specific Accounts, for example
Here’s another example that you might find helpful.
Let’s say you’re looking for all tweets from a particular account that contain certain keywords.
You might want to see what Google has to say about a particular SEO topic.
Let’s see if we can find everything Google’s official Twitter accounts have said about core updates in this case.
We’ll start with the keyword filters.
Consider how the keywords you’re researching could be used in a tweet.
Our subject could be referred to as “core update” or “core algorithm update” in this case.
As a result, we’ll include “core” and “update” to ensure that we catch everything.
Then we’ll add the official Twitter accounts for Google.
We’ll only include the official Google accounts that are most likely to tweet important information about core updates.
You can further refine your search by using engagement and date filters.
However, for the purposes of this example, we’ll ignore those filters.
After pressing the big “Search” button, this is what we get.
Everything Google’s accounts have tweeted about core updates is gathered in one place.
Find your most popular tweets, for example
The most-liked tweets of an account can also be found using Twitter’s advanced search feature.
You can also search for tweets based on the number of comments and retweets they’ve received, but for this example, we’ll just use likes.
This can be for your own account or any other public Twitter account.
Return to Twitter’s advanced search form, type in the account you want to look up, and then adjust the Engagements parameters.
When you run a search on Twitter, it will show you all tweets from an account that have a certain number of likes.
Every time you use advanced search, Twitter displays the formula it used in the search bar, as shown in the example below.
You can change the values in the search bar to refine a query without having to return to the advanced search form.
Summary
These are just a few of the many ways to use advanced search to search Twitter’s archives.
All of the filters can be used together. That means you can search by date, or within a date range, or for tweets with comments that also contain a specific word, and so on.
You can use a nearly infinite number of filter combinations to find the exact tweets you’re looking for.
The advanced search filters on Twitter are relatively simple to use now, but this was not always the case.
Previously, you had to manually type in the search operators, which necessitated a thorough understanding of how Twitter search works.
Previously, you could search by date by manually inserting the “since:” and “until:” operators into your search.
Instead of memorising all of the different search commands, you can now simply fill out a form.
Twitter’s advanced search isn’t available on the mobile app, which is a shame.
If you want to search by date on the mobile app, you can use the “since:” and “until:” operators to do so the old-fashioned way.
You can also use Twitter’s mobile browser version, which supports advanced search.
Do you want to learn more about this powerful search feature’s ins and outs?
Learn more from twitter and read Twitter clarifies its policy on duplicate content.
One Comment