Quick Tips to use Twitter Search in a better way

The new Twitter homepage is a refreshing change and brings a whole bunch of new features. The major change is that Twitter has improved its search functionality and highlights it with a large search box on its homepage. It has also introduced a list of trending or popular topics that are making rounds on twitter. This shows that Twitter is moving from a simple social networking site to a real-time search engine. Biz Stone, founder of Twitter, said on his Twitter blog that they will continue to improve the search results.

Here are some quick tips to make Twitter Search easier for you:

• To find messages sent by a particular user, use from:username. Example: from:CNN will search all the messages posted by CNN.
• Use “@Username” to find tweets mentioning that twitter user. Example: @Grazitti will show tweets that contain “@Grazitti”
• Use the hash (#) sign immediately before a word to search for any particular hashtag. Example: #SEO will find all the tweets mentioning the “#SEO”.
• Use the minus sign immediately before any word you want excluded in results. Example: Swine -flu will find tweets containing “swine” but not “flu”.
• To find tweets that ask a question, use a question mark (?) after the word. Example: SMM ? will find tweets containing “SMM” that ask a question.
• Use until: immediately before a specific date to find tweets sent before and until that date. Example: Barack Obama until:2009-08-6 will find tweets mentioning “Barack Obama” sent until date “2009-08-6” (year-month-day).
• Use the smiley sign ‘:)’ to find tweets with a positive attitude. Example: weather 🙂 will find tweets containing “weather” with a positive attitude.
• Use the sad sign ‘:( ’ to find tweets with a negative or sad attitude. Example: elections 🙁 will find tweets containing “elections” and with a negative attitude.
• Use filter:links to find tweets that link to a URL. Example: marketing filter:links will find tweets containing “marketing” with a link.