I just wanted to share a quick tip for using Twitter.

There certainly are many ways for people to see what their Twitter connections are saying. Of course, they can see tweets on their main page/stream. They also might create and monitor Lists to read tweets from different groups of people. And, there are plenty of third-party Apps that can be used to see data from your Twitter feed.

If you have the responsibility of monitoring Twitter, you may also regularly use the “Search” and “Saved Searches” function.

A Very Important Option in Search Results

One way that I use “Saved Searches” is to monitor mentions of my boss, John Foley, Jr. There are certainly different variations of his name that people may use when talking about him, but one common one is his Twitter handle, JohnFoleyJr.

Whenever I need to, I simply pull up that saved search to see what Twitter presents in its results. This will include @mentions, as well as any other tweets that simply include that phrase.

I thought that this was helping me see every tweet that Twitter’s search engine could find.

However, that was not the case! I was missing tweets.

The Feature That I Was Overlooking

Take a look at the screenshot below:

Now that I know it’s there, I’m a bit embarrassed that I missed it before.

But the search results can vary based on the option selected next to the “Tweets:” field label.

For me, “Top” has always been the default option that was selected. It wasn’t until I realized that I saw that option and changed it to “All” that I realized I was not always seeing tweets in real-time.

I hope that you find this tip helpful!

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Tags: monitoring, results, search, Social Media, tip, Tweet, Twitter