Twitter Search Tricks

Did you know, you can search for tweets on a topic that convey a positive or negative attitude/reaction or pick only tweets that contain questions related to that topic?

Links within a tweet indicate there is some kind of a "story". If you are interested in looking specifically at tweets in you timeline that contain links, use this link in the address bar - https://twitter.com/search/timeline/http

You can also try this - https://twitter.com/#!/search/timeline/filter%3Alinks

On the other hand, if you're interested in tweets/conversations in your timeline without links, use this URL - https://twitter.com/#!/search/timeline/-filter%3Alinks

If you feel the count of followers is a measure of popularity of a Twitter user, you can search by tag on the WeFollow website to find folks who are are most influential.

The following search queries (annotated & highlighted for emphasis) from the Twitter documentation show how you can use other operators (from:, to:, place:, filter:, source:) and keywords while searching on the Twitter website -

• twitter search - containing both "twitter" and "search". This is the default operator
• love OR hate - containing either "love" or "hate" (or both)
• from:twitterapi - sent from the user @twitterapi
• to:twitterapi - sent to the user @twitterapi
• place:opentable:2 - about the place with OpenTable ID 2
• place:247f43d441defc03 - about the place with Twitter ID 247f43d441defc03
• superhero since:2011-05-09 - containing "superhero" and sent since date "2011-05-09" (year-month-day).
• twitterapi until:2011-05-09 - containing "twitterapi" and sent before the date "2011-05-09".
• movie -scary :) - containing "movie", but not "scary", and with a positive attitude.
• flight :( - containing "flight" and with a negative attitude.
• traffic ? - containing "traffic" and asking a question.
• hilarious filter:links - containing "hilarious" and with a URL.
• news source:tweet_button - containing "news" and entered via the Tweet Button
• India source:metrotwit - containing "India" and entered via the MetroTwit app

There are also other operators that you can use both through the site's search interface or programmatially using the Twitter API.

Also see:
HOW TO add hashtags while auto-publishing posts to Twitter
Archive tweets & favorites with Google Reader