How to: Advanced Ways To Search Twitter Like A Pro

Sachin Jain

3 years ago

An advanced way to search Twitter like a pro

Twitter, a social networking and microblogging service on which users post and interact with messages known as “tweets”. Used by most of the people around the globe people like actors, politicians, entrepreneurs, scientists, founders. People send more than 500 million Tweets per day. It’s to be nice, to get the perfect search results about your followers, tweets that are tweeted more than 100 times and even more. Twitter’s advanced search works like a charm for digital marketing hacks, helps peoples to track their competitors.

Yes, Twitter gives the ability to filter the results and narrow your searches from all the verified accounts results. There are no official docs for Twitter advanced search. Twitter architecture is powerful to do an advanced search and do theses to account @google only.icks. These operators support searches retweets, min retweet, video, safe tweets, search an exact phrase.

Let’s have a look at Twitter advanced search operators.

Filter tweets by Words

Find tweets that contain an exact phrase
Operator: “”
Example: “Halloween 2019”
The above query operator list all the results that contain the exact phrase in any position. Results are not case sensitive.

Find tweets that contain either words
Operator: OR
Example: Halloween 2019 OR Diwali 2019
The above query results in all the tweets which contain either of any words in a search.

Exclude tweets that don’t include given words
Operator: –
Example: mobile -Samsung
This operator lists all the tweets that contain words mobile but not Samsung.

Filter tweets by Peoples

Find tweets for a specific account
Operator: from:account_username
Example: from:@realDonaldTrump
This operator results in all the tweet which tweets from given accounts.

Find the tweets from all the unverified accounts
Operator: -filter:verified
Example: Google -filter:verified
This will list all the tweets from unverified accounts. In this given example, it lists all the tweets from the unverified accounts only.

Find the tweets from all the verified accounts
Operator: filter:verified
Example: Google filter:verified
The blue verified badge on Twitter indicates that account of public interest is authentic called verified accounts. In this given example, it lists all the tweets from the verified accounts only.

Find tweets sent to a specific person
Operator: to:account_username
Example: to:@narendramodi
This will result in all the tweets which replied to the specific accounts. In this example it lists all tweets replied to account @narendramodi

Filter tweets by Hashtags

Find tweets with specific Hashtag
Operator: #
Example: #Halloween
This will result in all the tweets which contain the given hashtag. In the above example its lists all the tweets which have #halloween as a hashtag.

Filter tweets by Medias

Find tweets that have media embedded
Operator: filter:media
Example1: google filter:media – List all tweets which contain media and include words google.
Example2: from:@google filter:media – List all tweets which contain media from account google only.
Example3: to:@google filter:media – List all tweets which contain media including images or videos and replied to account @google only.

Find tweets that have an image embedded
Operator: filter:images
Example: Machine learning filter:images
This operator limits results which contain the images in tweets. In the above example lists all images related to Machine learning.

Find tweets that contain only native videos
Operator: filter:native_video
Example: Halloween filter:native_video
Filter out all the tweets which contain twitter native videos. In this above example list all the videos of Halloween. So that the users don’t have to go through all the tweets.

Find tweets that contain only links
Operator: filter:links
Example: facebook filter:links
This operator only shows tweets that contain links. Links can be any URL of webpage, Images.

Find tweets that contain only links to a specific website
Operator: url:website_link
Example: Halloween url:instagram.com
List down all the results which contain given website links in the tweets. It doesn’t matter that result tweets are retweets, reply one’s.

Filter tweets by Language

Find tweets by specific language
Operator: lang:language_code
Example: bytenbit lange:en
Operator “lang” results in all the tweets, tweeted at given language. Below is the list of all the code of Langauge which users can use in operators to define language.

Filter tweets by Dates

Find tweets since given date
Operator: since YYYY-MM-DD
Example: @LeoDiCaprio since:2012-02-19
This operator lists all the tweets which tweeted after the given date. In this example, it shows all teets which @LeoDiCaprio make after 2012-02-19 this date.

Find tweets before the given date
Operator: until:YYYY-MM-DD
Example: @RobertDowneyJr until:2012-02-19
This operator lists all the tweets which tweet before the given date. In this example, it shows all teets which @RobertDowneyJr make after 2012-02-19 this date.

Find the tweets which are not retweeted
Operator: filter:retweets
Example: Samsung filter:retweets
Will give all the tweets which are not retweeted. In the above example, it will list all tweets which contain words Samsung but not retweeted to anyone.

Filter tweets by Source

Find the tweets from the specified source
Operator: source:souce_name
Example: Google source:IOS
This results down all the tweets which are tweeted by specific source example iPhone, Ipad, Mac, Twitter Apps, Third-Party Apps.
Filter tweets by the specified source

Find the tweets from excluded source
Operator: -source:souce_name
Example: Google -source: IOS
This will show all the tweets except given souces. So in the above example, it will list all the tweets which include the words Google but not tweeted from IOS phones.

Filter tweets by Popularity

Find tweets that contain minimum N likes
Operator: min_faves: N
Example: @narendramodi min_faves:100
This operator lists all the favorites tweets that are liked by the least 100users. The given example lists all the tweets from account @narendramodi which have a minimum of 100 likes.

Find tweets that minimum n retweets
Operator: min_retweets:10
Example: @BarackObama min_retweets:100
This operator lists all the favorites tweets that are retweeted at least 100 times.

Find the tweets that are replies
Operator: filter:replies
Example: google filter:replies
This would filter out all the tweets and give only tweets which are replies.

Filter tweets by using multiple operators

Say, for example, I want all the tweets from all unverified accounts which include the words Tomorrowland tweeted between 2018-10-31 to 2019-10-31.

tomorrowland -filter:verified until:2018-10-31 since:2016-10-31

Let’s take another example, I want all the tweets from Donald trump account which talks about India between given dates then query looks like this

from:@realDonaldTrump “India“ until:2018-10-31 since:2016-10-31

Let’s go deeper into the above query. I want all the tweets from Donald trump account which talks about India between given dates which also includes media i.e images, videos. Query looks like this

from:@realDonaldTrump “India“ until:2018-10-31 since:2016-10-31 filter:media

Let’s go deeper into the above query. I want all the above conditions and tweets with a minimum of 1000 retweets then query looks like this

from:@realDonaldTrump “India“ until:2018-10-31 since:2016-10-31 filter:media min_retweets:10000

These are some example by which users uses the multiple operators to find tweets according to their requirements to get more refined search. Users can use any number of operators in one search query.

Twitter provides a web interface for advanced searches to perform these actions quickly called advanced search. Twitter advanced search provides multiple filters to perform a search via hashtags, languages, tweets between two dates.

If you’re not using it though, now is a great time to start with Twitter advanced search and Sound off in the comments below and let us know how it’s working for you.

Also, see