Twitter Search This

June 19, 2009 by Andrew Hyde Posted in Thoughts, Twitter

I landed at DEN yesterday and did a search for “DEN” and “DIA” on twitter to see if any of my friends were hanging out waiting for a flight.

With those terms being used at a rate of 10x a minute in German and Spanish Portuguese, the results were pretty useless.

Twitter Search

Twitter SearchLanguage control or the ability to search my friends please!

Last year, this search worked quite well.  Twitter is spreading around the world, hitting the mainstream in more than just our extended circles.

And this makes search a) harder b) less relevant and c) the start of mobs.





  • If you pick which language you want to search from the drop-down menu (English), the search results get significantly better for DIA/DEN.

    However, case-sensitive search would be great... for Twitter Search and for Google Alerts, while I'm making a wish list.
  • andrewhyde
    I had a feeling like I was an idiot here. Still funny, and on a mobile or in an app this is a hard setting to find.

    Thanks, updating the post.
  • In addition to the Language setting MarinaMartin noted, there's a Place setting in Advanced Search, so you can constrain results by location.

    This gets pretty good results: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=+DIA+near%3A...
  • Oh, you could constrain results by date, too, so you don't see who was tweeting about hanging around at the airport yesterday.
  • brightkite!
  • andrewhyde
    Yep! That one worked like a charm!
  • Martin May
    Beat me to it ;)
  • Adriano
    Most of the messages displayed above are in Portuguese, not in Spanish.
  • andrewhyde
    Good call, will update.
  • Obame
    spanish your ass, this is portuguese. why are noth-americans so stupid?
  • andrewhyde
    Already updated.
  • hubs
    In my eyes this makes search MORE relevant (just not to your particular needs at the time).
  • Had the exact same issue yesterday as I sat on the runway for half an hour after landing @ DIA.
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