The Comprehensive Guide to being a Twitter Advanced Search Pro

6000 tweets are sent every second on Twitter. This adds up to about 500 million tweets every day. That might seem like a lot, but did you know that you could search every single tweet or the profiles attached to them?
 
Twitter has an amazing tool that allows you to do this called Advanced Search.
 
Want to find new customers? Advanced Search does that.
 
Want to measure the satisfaction of your existing customers? Advanced Search does that.
 
Want to Find tweets in your specific area about a certain topic? Advanced Search does that.
 
Want to monitor your mentions? Advanced Search.
 
Need to find your interactions with other Twitter accounts? Advanced Search.
 
Advanced Search is THE tool that can level the playing field for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Below we show you some sweet tips and tricks to help you become a Twitter pro with Twitter Advanced Search.

HOW TO FIND TWITTER’S ADVANCED SEARCH!

 
To access Twitter’s Advanced Search, you need to be using Twitter’s Web app. Type in the URL www.twitter.com/search-advanced.
 

You can also get here from the standard search results page, by clicking on the “More Options” menu and selecting Advanced Search.
 
Advanced search is great because it gives you multiple ways to search, segment and filter all the data of tweets and profiles on Twitter.
 
You can isolate tweets that:
 
Words
 
Contains all of these words:

• Tweets containing all words in any position (“Twitter” and “search”)
• Enter two or more words in this field and you’ll see tweets that contain those terms (in no particular order). You can search for one or more phrases by using quotations to separate each, for example, “social media” and “social marketing”

 
Contains this exact phrase:

• Tweets containing exact phrases (“Twitter search”)
• It’s best to search for just one phrase in here. This field is particularly useful if you want to search for names or quotes.

 
Contains any of these words:

• Tweets containing any of the words (“Twitter” or “search”)
• This field is great to search for multiple words. For example, if you were searching for all things related to Dumsor, you could use ‘Dumsor’, ‘@Dumsor’ and ‘#Dumsor’.

 
Contains none of these words:

• Tweets excluding specific words (“Twitter” but not “search”)
• Whatever words you enter in here will remove tweets from your search results that contain the specific word or phrase. For example, if you put “Manchester United”, any tweets that contain “Manchester United” will not show up in the results.

 
Contains these hashtags:

• Tweets with a specific hashtag (#twitter)
• This one helps you to check in on hashtags. For example, if there is a chat going on, you can type in #twitterchat to check in on the conversation.

 
Written in:

• Tweets in a specific language (written in English)
• Using this option will allow you to find tweets in any of Twitter’s 50 supported languages.

 
People
 
From these accounts:

• Tweets from a specific account (Tweeted by “@TwitterComms”)
• This filter will only show you tweets from accounts you add in this field.

 
To these accounts:

• Tweets sent as replies to a specific account (in reply to “@TwitterComms”)
• Enter the username of one or more accounts and you’ll be able to see tweets that have been sent to them.

 
Mentioning these accounts:

• Tweets that mention a specific account (Tweet includes “@TwitterComms”)
• Pretty similar to the above two filters, enter an account name in this field and you will be able to see any tweets mentioning your chosen usernames.

 
Places
 
Near this place:

• Tweets sent from a geographic location, e.g. a specific city, state, country
• Use the place dropdown to select the geographic location
• You can see tweets sent from a particular location. Very good tool if you are looking for people interested in your products or service in a certain location.

 
Dates
 
From this date to this date:

• Tweets sent before a specific date, after a specific date or within a date range
• This filter allows you to search for tweets within a certain time frame.

In addition to the Advanced Search page itself, there are also other ways to further improve your search results. On Twitter’s search results page, there is a menu option that allows you to filter your results by media type, profiles, etc. And you can also attempt a number of advanced search tricks from any Twitter search box, using a combination of Twitter operators. These operators can help to weed out the useful posts from the vast number of tweets available:
 
Operator: “happy hour” | Finds tweets: containing the exact phrase “happy hour.”
 
Operator: love OR hate | Finds tweets: containing either “love” or “hate” (or both).
 
Operator: beer -root | Finds tweets: containing “beer” but not “root.”
 
Operator: #dimsum | Finds tweets: containing the hashtag “dimsum.”
 
Operator: from:jumpstarthk | Finds tweets: sent from person “jumpstarthk.”
 
Operator: to:reggieaddae | Finds tweets: sent to person “reggieaddae.”
 
Operator: @jumpstarthk | Finds tweets: Referencing person “jumpstarthk.”
 
Operator: “happy hour” near:”wanchai” | Finds tweets: containing the exact phrase “happy hour” and sent near “wanchai”
 
Operator: near:wanchai within:15mi | Finds tweets: sent within 15 miles of “wanchai.”
 
Operator: superhero since:2010–12–27 | Finds tweets: containing “superhero” and sent since date “2010–12–27” (year-month-day).
 
Operator: ftw until:2010–12–27 | Finds tweets: containing “ftw” and sent up to date “2010–12–27.”
 
Operator: movie -scary | Finds tweets: containing “movie”, but not “scary,” and with a positive attitude.
 
Operator: flight | Finds tweets: containing “flight” and with a negative attitude.
 
Operator: traffic ? | Finds tweets: containing “traffic” and asking a question.
 
Operator: hilarious filter:links | Finds tweets: containing “hilarious” and linking to URLs.
 
Operator: news source:twitterfeed | Finds tweets: containing “news” and entered via TwitterFeed
 
Just remember that Twitter search is a little different from Google Search. When you’re thinking of which keywords and phrases to query, think about how people talk to each other. Tweets tend to be a lot more conversational that Google search terms.
 
Now let’s teach you how to be a Twitter Search Pro.

JUMPSTART GUIDE TO TWITTER ADVANCED FOR MARKETING AND SALES

 
We will show you some marketing tricks, how to monitor your brand’s reputation. How to analyze your competition and get a leg up on them. How to fine tune your search and finally some sales tricks.

ADVANCED SEARCH FOR MARKETING FOR PROS

 

1. Saving your search.

 
Twitter allows you to save up to 25 searches per account. To save a search:

1. Sign in to your Twitter account on Twitter.com
2. Enter your search into the search box
3. At the top of the results page, click More options and then click Save this search. Next time you click the search box, a pop-up menu will display your Saved searches.

 
Saved searches can be great to keep an eye on people sharing your content, keywords relevant to your brand and your own mentions.

TO REVISIT A SAVED SEARCH:

1. Sign in to your Twitter account.
2. Click anywhere in the search box at the top of the page.
3. Scroll to your Saved searches and click on the saved search to revisit results for that query.

TO REMOVE A SAVED SEARCH:

1. Sign in to your Twitter account.
2. Click anywhere in the search box at the top of the page.
3. Scroll to your Saved searches and click on the X to the right of the search you would like to remove. This search will no longer appear in your saved searches.

TO EMBED A SEARCH:

1. Sign in to your Twitter account.
2. Enter your search into the search box.
3. At the top of your search results, click More options and then select Embed this search.
4. Follow the instructions to create a search widget that you can add to your website. Find more information in the developer documentation here.
5. Look up all your interactions with another Twitter account.

 
Need proof that you said the meeting was at 11? Or that you mentioned that you had a new account? Or just trying to catch up with an old acquaintance and can’t remember all of your interactions with them on Twitter. As a way to get proof or refresh your mind, you can use the ‘From these accounts’ and ‘To these accounts’ filters.
 

 
Here are all of my interactions with my buddy Tom Showalter’s Twitter account:
 

 
 
Ladies go easy on the stalking

 

1. Find the most popular Tweets about a particular topic

 
Twitter will display “Top Tweets” for each search term you query, but this pro move allows you to define your own parameters for what a popular post should be.
 
We stumbled upon this on the Digital Inspiration blog:
 
Go to the Twitter search box, type any search term and append the operator min_retweets:[number] or min_faves:[number] to filter your search results.
 
You could use this to Tweets about any brand with a certain number of retweets, say Nike. You would search “Nike min_retweets:30” and that would return all tweets containing the brand “Nike” that had been retweeted 30 times.
 
To take it a step further, you could find your most popular tweets (favorite the most) by doing the same as above but instead of “min_retweets:[number]”, use “min_faves:[number]”.
 
With the previous example:
 
“Nike min_faves:30” will return tweets containing the brand “Nike” that have been favorite by at least 30 users.
 

1. Find your most popular tweets

 
Using a similar technique as in step three, you can find the most popular tweets for any Twitter account. You just need to type in the search bar:
 
“from:[your account] min_retweets:30”.
 
For example: “from:jumpstarthk min_retweets:30” will return tweets sent from @jumpstarthk Twitter account with more than 30 retweets.
 
Pretty cool huh. Feeling like a pro yet?
 

1. Find ideas for blog posts

 
Struggling to create content or find topics for your blog? Well, we have a solution for you. When researching for topics, use Advanced Search to find out exactly what people are saying about the subject.
 
Here is an example:
 
Here’s a search we used to research a post on Facebook Ads we are working on:
 

 
 Try it out and see.
 

1. Find great blog posts

 
Trying to learn new skills or just doing research on a certain subject? Here is the pro way with Twitter Advance:

1. Add your chosen topic to the “All of these words” field
2. Add ‘http’ to “This Exact phrase”

 
In the search fields, you can add your chosen topic to the ‘All of these words’ field and then add ‘http’ to ‘This Exact phrase’.
 
Here’s an example of a search I use to keep an eye on any content marketing blog posts:
 

 

1. Find tweets posted by specific accounts.

 
Sometimes you may want to find what a specific Twitter account has said about a certain keyword. Using Twitter Advanced Search, you can do this easily. Let’s say you wanted to see what Steph Curry thinks about his teammate Kevin Durant.
 
You would search for the keyword and their name. search for a keyword and their name.
 

 
Here’s how Curry has reacted to Durant. Hasn’t said much since 2017:
 

 
The more we write this post the more we realize how we are empowering women to catch their men on Twitter. Go feminism?
 

1. Filter Tweets by location

 
If you want to find the conversations that are happening about your brand in a certain location, Advanced Twitter Search can do that. In the Places section, just select your location from the dropdown, and it will show you all the tweets from that area.
 
This pro trick is even more useful when paired with a couple of keywords. All of a sudden, you can now search for what people are saying about your brand in a specific location.
 
For example: Dimsum near: “Wan Chai District, Hong Kong” within:15mi
 

THE PRO WAY TO MONITOR YOUR BRAND REPUTATION

 

1. Monitor mentions of your company

 
Monitoring your brand is one thing that all brands on Twitter should do, as the information you can learn is extremely invaluable. Using Twitter’s Advanced Search you can not only monitor when people mention your brand name but also when they mention your Twitter handle and even include your URL in their tweets. Pretty amazing right?
 
Here’s a search we use for all things Jumpstart Media:
 

 

1. Filter out specific Tweets

 
If you want to filter out any results mentioning anything specific, say another brand or topic or word, you can do so by adding their username and URL in the “None of these words” Advanced Search field.
 

 

1. Find news about your company

Want to see what has been written about you or if there are any news articles about your brand or a certain query? After you run your Advanced Search, on the search result page, select the dropdown “More options” and under that select “News”. This will give you all results that have a link to a news site.
 

1. Find satisfied and unhappy customers

So not only can you determine what people are saying about your brand, but you can also determine whether the comments are positive or negative. This is probably one of the best methods to find feedback and new ideas as well. For example, a frustrated customer’s tweet could lead to you developing a new product or service that adds an additional revenue stream to your business.
 
To determine whether tweets are positive or negative, when you search, simply add a happy or unhappy emoticon to the end of your search term, eg. “Nike : (” or “Nike : )”

PERFORM PRO RECON ON YOUR COMPETITION.

 

1. Monitor sentiment about competitors

The same way you can monitor the sentiment of your brand, you can also monitor that of your competitors. This can be great to find guerilla opportunities to steal market share.
 
To check this, add their company name and URL to the ‘All of these words’ bar.
 

1. Search your competitor’s tweets

Using Advanced Search for Twitter, you can search for tweets from any Twitter account as well as specify specific keywords. To do this, use the “All of these words” and “From these accounts” fields.
 
For example, to show all the times Seth Godin has mentioned failing, you would search like this:
 

 
As a shortcut, you could search: from:buffer “failing” in the toolbar search.

FINE-TUNING YOUR SEARCH

 

1. See Search Results for Only Tweeps You Follow

 
We started this article by stating that there are about 6000 tweets sent every second on Twitter. With that many going out, it can be easy to miss great content from the people you are actually following.
 
You can do this by filtering out the results from the search results page. Under the “More Options” dropdown, select “From people you follow”
 
Here’s an example search we used to see who from the people we follow had been talking about entrepreneurship:
 

 

1. Find video related to a topic

 
Do you find it easier to learn better by watching a
video or by reading? You can use Twitter search to find videos on a specific topic. To filter videos, search for the topic, using Advanced or regular search, and then select Videos to filter the page results.
 

 

1. Find photos related to a subject

Same as above, except instead of selecting Videos, select Photos on the search results page.
 

1. Find interesting people to follow

If you’re looking to find new people to connect with in your niche, you can run a search on a keyword or phrase and then filter ‘Accounts’ that match those keywords.
 
You can take this further by combining keywords with a location to find accounts or businesses within a certain area.
 

1. View questions only

 
On the Twitter Advanced Search page, if you type in a question mark at the end of your query, you will be shown tweets that are in the form of a question. This is a great way to do your customer support over Twitter.

WHAT’S THE POINT OF BEING A PRO IF YOU CAN’T USE IT FOR YOUR OWN GAIN?

 

1. Look for buying signals

 
One thing we all with we could do is to be able to find exciting opportunities online. Try this trick next time you are searching, search for terms like ‘anyone recommend’ or ‘any advice on’ or ‘where to buy’. Phrases like these will return results of people who are looking for help or advice and could be potential clients either on a specific keyword for your business or in a specific location.
 
Also keep an eye out for any buying signals shown on Twitter (for example,dissatisfaction with a competitor or showing a need your product can fulfil) and engage to get the sales cycle in motion. If you can spot someone who is looking to make a purchase imminently, jump in and get on their radar.
 
Now go forth and be a pro and make us proud.
 

About the Author

Reginald Addae is the Director of Marketing & Special Programs for Jumpstart Media with over 10 years of experience in Digital Marketing.