The Best Twitter Search Tricks

e Twitter Archiver and Twitter Bots app fire each time a new tweet is found that match your search query. You can write simple search queries (like #Oscars) or more complex query (like obama min_retweets:10 filter:news) that uses one or more Twitter search operators.

How to Search Twitter Like a Pro

Here’s a complete list of Twitter search operators that can help you perform more accurate searches on Twitter:

from:BarackObamaAll tweets sent by a particular Twitter user

to:BarackObama -filter:links
Tweets sent to @BarackObama but not containing any links

elections list:TIME/time-staff
Search for tweets from users who belong to a particular Twitter list

youtube.com min_faves:100
Tweets containing YouTube videos that are favorited by at least 100 users

earthquake min_retweets:10
Tweets that have been retweeted at least 10 times

iPhone near:NY within:10mi
Tweets sent by users within the 10 mile radius of New York containing iPhone

#foodrecipe lang:en
Tweets sent in particular language (en = English)

iPhone Reviews since:2016-04-01 until:2016-04-09
Tweets sent in a particular time range (may not work with Twitter APIs)

YouTube good OR amazing OR awesome filter:links
Tweets containing YouTube videos that are described as awesome or amazing

#Emmys filter:images
Show tweets for a particular hashtag but containing images

Barack Obama filter:news
Show only tweets that mention a keyword and contain links to news websites

from:john to:peter -RT
Tweets from user @John that @mention user @Peter but exclude Retweets

family games filter:safe
Filter tweets containing adult or potentially sensitive content

tornado filter:media
Show tornado tweets containing images or videos

music concert filter:native_video
Show tweets that contain native video (uploaded inside tweet)

How to Find the Most Popular Tweet

The engagement filter inside Tweetdeck surfaces the best tweets and removes the noise from Twitter search results but the most surprising part is that Twitter has not made this filter available outside Tweetdeck. You don’t even have it inside the official Twitter app.

Well, here’s the trick. You can actually filter tweets by engagement level on the Twitter website or inside any Twitter app using an undocumented search operator that Twitter doesn’t want us to know about.

Go to the Twitter search box, type any search term and append the operator min_retweets:[number] or min_faves:[number] to filter your search results. For instance, here’s a sample search that will only shows tweets pointing to the labnol.org domain that have been favorited or retweeted at least 5 times.