Using Google Search to find interesting Twitter Users

I recently wrote an article about using Google search results to find out who has made one of your tweets a favourite by a particular search string and things have developed from there.

Alexandre Gamela, writes on a Portuguese blog called Twitter Portugal and on an article today he has posted about using another search query in Google to produce results and could prove to be more effective in finding interesting people on twitter that you can connect with. Alexandres personal blog is in English and worth checking out.

Twitter Location search in Google

Open Google and in the search bar paste this query:

site:twitter.com/* location+**yourlocation**

In the string above replace the red text with the location where you want to locate people, say for example, your local town or area so the string would look like this:

site:twitter.com/* location+London

The results that come back are the listings Google has for twitter people who have added their profile location aas London hence the reference in the string to the word “location” plus “London”.

I have run a few tests to see how this breaks down and it works for street names as well.  Check this out.

site:twitter.com/* location+Wall Street

Using Twitter location search in Google:

Something I came across was also the use of locations that have two or more words as their name, like New York, that produced a different set of results on each search when the search is performed with and without a space between the words “New” and “York” like the examples below:

site:twitter.com/* location+New York

site:twitter.com/* location+NewYork

As you can see the results are quite different and Google does suggest that you try New York as the spelling when the second search is performed.  This now has me thinking about how these results are populated in order of rank as the New York Times has top position on the location search. Interesting maybe… Need to think about this a little more before I draw any conclusions.

Twitter Biography search in Google

Another variation on the search which could prove to be even more interesting is how to search peoples twitter biography profiles with Google. The search string works in the same manner as the one above but we replace the word location with Bio and the term with something related to the bio like so:

site:twitter.com/* bio+**information we wish to find in someones bio**

This means we can insert a keyword or phrase instead of the red text above to search through twitter users bios and hopefully find someone really interesting to connect with so it could be any of the searches below:

site:twitter.com/* bio+doctor

site:twitter.com/* bio+art museum

site:twitter.com/* bio+blogger

Quite honestly the possibilities are endless and one important point this illustrates is how you need to consider your bio in twitter as this search is used in various other formats and applications to produce results. Does your Bio reflect you accurately?  Maybe its time to revise it a little!

Let me know what type of searches you do and how the results work out for you!

**Update.

Variation on using Google search to find interesting twitter users

Alexandre just replied to a comment I left on his site directing me to another way of using the searches above to drill down and find really specific people you would love to meet on twitter by Mike Mirrell. The method he describes seem to have much more specific and targeted results than than above.

I have quoted Mikes post on Using Google to Twitter Tweeple as I reckon its only fair he gets recognition for posting this cool information. Thanks Mike really cool stuff.

Using Google to Find Twitter Tweeple

I came across a neat tip on searching for specific folks to follow on Twitter. Now there are applications such as Nearby Tweets and GeoTweet but this seemed much more effective to me. It basically leverages the Google search engine to search Twitter profiles. This tip leverages the google site search.

Here’s how it works:

1.  Example: Say I want to search for marketers in the NYC area. This is what I would copy into Google.com

site:twitter.com intitle:”on twitter” “bio* * marketing” “location NYC”

This returned 8 pages of targeted results.

2.  Example: If I would like to find recruiters in the Austin area I could use this search

site:twitter.com intitle:”on twitter” “bio* * recruiter” “location austin”

This returned 11 results.

From these examples, you can just play with the words behind bio and location to get different results. For example you could search for “PR” within “dallas”.

Hopefully you found this helpful enough to share with others.

- Back to makin’ bacon

If anyone has any more ideas or experiences with this form of searching let us know in the comments below, or if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.  Enjoy!