Searching Twitter can be a refreshingly different experience from the search experience we’ve come to expect from major search engines like Google and Bing. With the Search Engines you get results defined in terms of some algorithm’s idea of what is important. With Twitter search you get a list of the most current tweets that contain the keywords you are searching for. This is a radically different approach to search.
Say, for example, you want to find current deals or special product offers in your city. Type in “deals, toledo” and you’ll get a list of current tweets mentioning these keywords. But when I ask for these keywords today I get a long series of tweets about “plea deals expected in Toledo point-shaving scandal”. Not exactly what I had in mind.
Twitter’s advanced search lets you refine your search to include a broader range of keywords, or exclude things you don’t want included in your results. To see how this works, check out this video from Mashable:
Understanding how searches are conducted in Twitter also has a bearing on how you “optimize” your tweets so they will be found by the people you are targeting. For example, when I search for “deals, kitchener” (using advanced search) I get only those tweets including those exact keywords. But when I search for “#deals” (using the hashtag search) and “kitchener” using the location search, I get a much longer list of deals (from my own account called KWTweetNet. Optimizing your tweets with appropriate keywords, hashtags and location settings is important to getting them found by the people you are trying to reach.
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Cute And I tolalty agree, the changes are fantastic. I’ve blogged about how it’s enhancing how the charity I work for uses Facebook
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