12 Awesome Tools For Efficient Twitter Searches

It’s no secret that Twitter’s native search tool isn’t that efficient. Yes, it offers some nice advanced search options (advanced search isn’t accessible directly from your Twitter homepage. You need to go here for that). But it just limits itself to searching tweets when there are so many other things people might want to find out (like followers, profile bios, etc.).

This article attempts to list some of the best third-party Twitter search tools. I know there are more than 12 out there. But many of them have similar functionality so it was about picking and choosing the best ones. Check them out and make Twitter-time more productive. If you happen to be one of the few that have not tried Twitter, here is a good video explaining more about what it is.

• TweepSearch
  TweepSearch is for searching people on Twitter. Enter your keyword and it’ll scan the profiles of Twitter users who have that keyword listed in their bio. The resulting list can be sorted by number of followers and friends.

Hence, if you are looking for a designer or programmer on Twitter, just type that query in this tool’s search bar and get the corresponding list of people.

• Backtweets
  Backtweets is a nifty Twitter search app which can search for links and short urls on Twitter. Now, this is something that even Twitter’s advanced search can’t do. 

You can use this tool to see how many people have tweeted a specific link. It doesn’t matter if the link was shortened using an url shortner. This tool will still show that in the results.

• Nearby Tweets
  Nearby Tweets, as the name suggests, lets you discover tweets from local users. It uses Google Maps to find your location and then shows the tweets by Twitter users near you. This tool could come in handy for businesses who are looking to expand their local footprint. They can check what’s buzzing among the local community. 

• TwitJobSearch
  Looking for a job? Then TwitJobSearch is a site you should bookmark. It filters the tweets that contain words like “hiring”, “job”, etc. And it does that quite effectively. Just enter the relevant search term and you are good to go. You might just land your next gig using this site so keep a watch. 

• Searchtastic
  Searchtastic is another nice Twitter search tool which not only shows results that are older than those shown by Twitter’s native search tool, but also lets you search keyword specific tweets. Louis Gray gave a nice description of the tool here. 

• Tweetmeme
  You must have heard of Tweetmeme. No? You know those retweet buttons that are ubiquitous in the blogosphere, right (you’ll find one at the end of this post too). Those come from Tweetmeme. 

Tweetmeme, apart from showing the most popular tweets across the web, has a search function that’s pretty effective.

• Monitter
  Monitter is probably the most well known Twitter based reputation management tool. It can display different keyword and phrase searches on Twitter, all parallel to each other in a neat interface. Oh, and it’s as real-time as Twitter is. 

• Areaface
  Areaface lets you search location based tweets via keywords and phrases. You can pinpoint a location on Google Maps and it will shows recent tweets as well as twitter users from that area in a visually attractive interface. 

• Twellow
  Twellow is a cool site. It organizes the information it has gathered from Twitter in a yellow pages format. You can search for services, for people in different professions, and much more. It’s like a complete Twitter directory. 

• Schmap Picks
  Schmap Picks is for searching reviews on Twitter about restaurants and bars. It only has some popular cities in the U.S. along with London and Sydney, so it is useful to people only in these cities. But it’s a good service nevertheless. 

• Local Follow
  Local Follow aims to simplify your search for Twitter users by giving 4 main search fields – Bio, Location, Name and Tweets (if you remember a tweet but can’t recall who tweeted it). It uses Twitter’s API and Google search to produce a list of user profiles based on your keywords. 

• Hashtags
  Last, but by no means the least, is Hashtags.org. Hashtags is a popular method to categorize tweets and this website lets you search tweets matching to a particular hashtag. Simple and useful. 

Hope you liked the above list. Don’t forget to spread the word if you did. 🙂

Cheers,

Abhijeet

Written on 4/8/2010 by Abhijeet Mukherjee. Abhijeet is a blogger and web publisher from India. He loves all things tech as long as it aids in productivity. He edits Guiding Tech, a blog that publishes useful guides, tutorials and tools. Check it out and subscribe to its feed if you like the site. You can also find him on Twitter.

Photo Credit: trekkyandy