With the popularity of social search continuing to increase, we thought it would be a good time to help people “find” what they want on Twitter.

Most people have seen the search facility on Twitter – however this can be narrowed down further with a few simple commands (listed below the image)

• Standard Search: Places To Visit = tweets containing “places” “to” “visit” in any order – this is the default setting for Twitter.
• “Places To Visit” = tweets containing the exact phrase “places to visit”.
• Manchester OR Leeds = tweets containing either “manchester” or “leeds” (or both).
• Football -spanish = tweets containing “football” but not “spanish”.
• #Leeds = tweets containing the hashtag “Leeds”.
• from:AndyClaytonEC = tweets sent FROM the person “AndyClaytonEC”.
• to:lesanto = tweets sent TO the person “lesanto”.
• @jennysjams = tweets referencing the person “jennysjams”.
• “places to visit” near:”Leeds” = tweets containing the exact phrase “places to visit” and sent near “Leeds”.
• near:Lincoln within:20mi = tweets sent within 20 miles of “Lincoln”.
• social search since:2010-02-01 = tweets containing “social search” and sent SINCE date “1st February 2010″ (always have the year-month-day format when searching).
• social search until:2010-01-31 = tweets containing “social search” and sent UP TO the date “2010-01-31″. (although I am not sure how far back you can go with this, as I thought Twitter no longer kept your tweets for longer than a month or two).
• football -spanish = tweets containing “football”, but not “spanish”, and with a positive attitude.
• traffic = tweets containing “traffic” and with a negative attitude.
• traffic ? = tweets containing “traffic” and asking a question.
• tricks filter:links = tweets containing “tricks” and linking to URLs.
• news source:twitterfeed = tweets containing “news” and entered via TwitterFeed

Using Twitter search more accurately as a business can help you to find people either talking about or looking for your product or service. Equally, as a venue, you can see people who are tweeting close by to where you are – this might give you the opportunity to invite them to come and look at your venue, or to drop in for a coffee.