How to master Twitter’s search engine like a pro?

Not everyone thinks about using Twitter to do research. Under its simplistic appearance, the search engine of the social network is however much more complex than one might think.

If the first instinct of users is to enter a few keywords in the platform’s search engine, it is possible to optimize these queries by adding search operators, like those existing on Google. Thanks to them, the results obtained will be much more precise, and above all, much more relevant.

But before that, there are some technical aspects of Twitter’s search engine that should be taken into account. This does not take accents into account, for example. Searching for a word with or without an accent does not change anything. Another specificity, it does not manage the masculine / feminine and singular / plural. If you are looking for terms that can change gender or number, then you will need to write them matched in all possible spellings to include them in the results.

Finally, searching for a word or an expression in the social network’s search engine will allow you to search for tweets that include them, but also user accounts that mention them in their biography (under the People tab).

Here are all the essential search operators to master the Twitter search engine:

• “your search here“: Enclose a search phrase or phrase in quotes to display all tweets that use that exact phrase.
• OR and AND: Use OR (or) and AND (and) written in upper case, to search for several different terms. You can combine them by putting each group in parentheses.

Example: (Tours OR Orleans) AND “best city” will display all tweets mentioning Tours or Orleans, and best city.

• – (minus sign): add a minus sign followed by a word, or a hashtag, or an expression in quotes to exclude them from search results.
• from: accountname: allows you to filter a search by displaying only tweets posted by a specific account. Can be associated with the sign – to exclude a specific account from the results.
• to: @accountname: allows you to filter a search by displaying only responses sent to a specific account.
• @accountname: use a user’s account name directly in the search field to display all tweets mentioning that account and posted by that account.
• Tweet URL: Directly paste the URL of a tweet into the search box to display all Retweet of that tweet with a comment.
• Filter: follows: add this operator to your search to display only tweets from accounts you have subscribed to.
• Filter: verified: add this operator to your search to display only tweets from verified accounts.
• Exclude: verified: Add this operator to your search to exclude verified accounts from results.
• Filter: replies: add this operator to your search to display only tweets that replied to another tweet.
• Exclude: hashtags: allows you to exclude hashtags from your main search.
• filter: links / exclude: links: displays only or excludes all messages including a media (website, image, video, etc.).
• filter: images / exclude: images: displays only or excludes tweets including an image.
• filter: videos / exclude: videos: only display or exclude tweets including videos (Twitter, YouTube, etc.).
• filter: native_video / exclude: videos: only display or exclude tweets with native Twitter videos.
• lang: fr: displays only tweets in the chosen language (here French).
• since: yyyy-mm-dd: displays all tweets since the date in year-month-day format.
• until: yyyy-mm-dd: display all tweets up to date in year-month-day format.
• near: location: displays all geolocated tweets published near a defined location.
• min_retweets: xxx: displays all tweets that have been retweeted at least xxx times
• min_faves: xxx: displays all tweets that have obtained at least xxx likes.
• min_replies: xxx: displays all tweets that have received at least xxx responses.

These search operators can be combined with each other and associated with your classic searches to obtain more relevant results.

With them, you will be able to search for tweets with multiple specific words, exact phrases, find comments associated with a tweet, exclude certain terms or accounts from results, and much more.