On Monday we showed you how to get more out of Twitter Search by using the advanced search form. Today we take you even deeper into Twitter search by talking about search ‘operators’.

A search ‘operator’ is a word or symbol used in conjunction with a keyword that specifies that you only want to find mentions of that keyword in a particular context. All search engines allow the use of ‘operators’, but they aren’t very well known.

For example, if you wanted to find mentions of the keywords ‘fast car’ on Twitter, you might type ‘fast car’ into the search field. The results will show mentions of the phrase ‘fast car’, but also mentions of just the keyword ‘fast’ or just the keyword ‘car’. This might therefore show irrelevant results. You might find mentions of phrases like ‘fast food’ or similarly ‘car servicing’. To be more accurate, if you wanted to find out when the exact phrase ‘fast car’ had been used then you’d need to use the operator “ “ in your search, as in “fast car”. The results will then just show when the words ‘Fast Car’ (those words, in that order) had been mentioned.

Operators perform many of the advanced search parameters used by the advanced search form mentioned on Monday’s post. The advantage of operators is that you type them directly into the search field, rather than filling out the form. They are popular amongst more advanced users, or those who come from a development or IT background, since they are a short cut but you do need to remember what they are.

Here is a list of all the advanced search operators on Twitter:

As you can see, an easy way to look for positive or negative mentions of a particular word is to use a :-) or :-( with your keyword.

Other operators include “near”,  to find out mentions of a keyword in a geographic proximity to a location.

For the most advanced, you can search for Tweets that just contain links to other websites, by using the operator “filter:links”.

If you want to find people who are just using Twitter from particular 3rd party applications you can do that too, by using the operator “source:Web” or “source:Tweetdeck” to find people just updating using the web, or Tweetdeck.

You can find a full list of operators here.

Have a go at using some advanced search operators on Twitter and let us know how you get on.