Twitter Tips: Search for Tweets Near Calgary

Search for Tweets Near Calgary

A feature built into twitter that we use frequently is to search for tweets near you / near by location, which shows you results close to where you are physically.

We (myself and Mrs Crackmacs) currently use the official twitter app for Android, as well as the twitter.com web client. There are lots of other twitter apps out there that better utilize these search functions, such as the Near you / Near by function, but since we use the main twitter offerings, this is only relevant people that also use what we do.

Why would you want to search for tweets near you? This is especially helpful with breaking news or current events because content people share doesn’t always include proper hashtags.

Here’s how to do it

With the twitter.com web client, when you search for something (in this case: raining) click the “more options” and select “near you” to see local results.

Twitter.com

Twitter for Android

Here’s how to do it on Android. I don’t have an iPhone so I can’t show you how to do it in that environment, but it’s probably pretty similar.

 

Here’s an example on how this would be useful;

if a fire just broke out somewhere in the city I could search for the word fire and refine it to show Near you to see any tweets where someone said the word fire and tweeted it within or near by Calgary, so long as the person who tweeted has locations enabled. If someone has “allow twitter to use your location” disabled then their tweets will not show up with this method.

Just now I searched for cop and near by. RC is located in Calgary and it found this tweet, which I wouldn’t have found if I had just been searching by hashtags. Because it includes no hashtags.

See a cop car with red & blue lights on, go through an intersection only to turn them off? Here's info on why: https://t.co/TgDP9EycE6#yyc

— Cst. Riley Babott (@CstBabott) November 16, 2016

Another way of doing this is using an advance search string in the search box, this lets you find tweets from near by any location.

• rain near:Calgary
  this will look for any tweets where someone said rain and the person tweeted it from Calgary.

Another helpful search method is finding tweets by a certain person. You’ll find this extremely helpful if you’ve ever lost one of your own tweets, or want to find something from years ago.

• from:Crackmacs rain
  This checks @Crackmacs for any mention of the word rain. See it live here. You can use this to search other accounts too. Like If I searched from:Nenshi lol it would show any tweets where Nenshi said lol. (Nenshi has never tweeted “lol” but 4 tweets do show up!)

 

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Advanced Searching

Twitter has powerful search options and you should totally familiarize yourself with them to get the most out of it. Receptional.com put together this awesome chart with more examples.

 

Operator:	What you get:
Eleanor Rigby	Contains both “Eleanor” and “Rigby” in any order. This is the default way of searching.
“Lucy in the sky with diamonds”	Contains the phrase “Lucy in the sky with diamonds”
Hey OR Jude	Contains either “Hey” or “Jude” or both
Twist -Shout	Contains “Twist” but not “Shout”
#Yesterday	Contains the hashtag “#Yesterday”
from:Crackmacs	Tweets sent by @Crackmacs
to:Crackmacs	Tweets sent to @Crackmacs
@Crackmacs	Tweets that are sent by or mention @Crackmacs
“Yellow Submarine” near:Liverpool	Contains the exact phrase “Yellow Submarine” sent near the city of Liverpool
near:”Liverpool” within:15mi	Tweets sent from within 15 miles of Liverpool
Help since:2014-01-20	Contains “Help” and was published after 25th January 2014. The date format is Year-Month-Date
Blackbird until:2014-01-20	Contains “Blackbird” and was published before 25th January 2014
lang:en	Contains only English language Tweets
“I saw her standing there” filter:links	Contains the phrase “I saw her standing there” and a link
“Strawberry fields forever” ?	Contains the phrase “Strawberry fields forever” and a question
“All my loving” source:tweetdeck	Contains the phrase “All my loving” and was sent via Tweetdeck

As you can see, being able to search for tweets near you is incredibly handy and is a great way to find information through Twitter.