In this edition of our weekly Twitter column I’d like to ridicule Twitter search. Yes, no mistake here. We know now, after I’ve predicted it a few weeks ago that
instead of just showing the latest ones.
Search Engine Land asked when the news Twitter search ranking will get live but they received a “no comment” kind of reply. Twitter search is at least 10 years late when it comes to search technology so a few weeks or months sooner or later do not matter. Also, who needs Twitter search?
I’ve mentioned third party Twitter search engine Topsy in the past. Topsy is the IMHO best Twitter search engine around. Topsy already rates or ranks tweets according to several factors like most probably the number of tweets and the influence of the Twitter users.
Topsy Twitter search works great for me although I mostly search for SEO related items.
We know that there are quiet a few bad apples in the SEO industry, especially those who have no name, brand or reputation. These people and companies try to game Topsy but still most SEO related results are amazingly clean, far cleaner than in Google, both regular and real time results.
In Topsy you can choose what time frame you want to search.
- “hour”
- “day”
- “week”
- “month”
- “all” (time)
Of course you can game the system on Topsy in a different way as well. You see it when searching for SEO in the “all” category. It has been achieved by social engineering or in other words pulling a Calacanis. Just slander a whole industry and make sure there is no substance in your claims. By the sheer numbers you are relevant then. Still that post is completely worthless. So Topsy has to work on its ranking algorithm in order not to reward the lowest common denominator like Google or Digg. The first step has already been done: In spite of having more tweets it ranks behind two of the truly relevant postings.
I doubt that. I’m even afraid that Twitter will try to play foul and either remove access to the tweets for Topsy. We’ve seen similar instances of competing services being discontinued in the past. another probably scenario is that Topsy gets acquired by either Twitter or Google or another major player. Meanwhile Topsy is the best way to search Twitter right now. Use it as long as it exists in its current form. Do you know a btter Twitter serch engine that topsy? I’ve tested several without seing the rsults I’d like to see.
I have been using twitter search because I didn’t know about Topsy. Thanks for the information about it. Sounds like Topsy really is better. Will definitely be trying it.
TipTop http://FeelTipTop.com does the ranking better than the rest.
As you point out, it still quite incredible how bad the Twitter search box is. They might as well not have it for the good it does. I find that unless I type in exactly the right name/words I don’t get what I want. I’ll give Topsy a go…
Twitter is overrated. The ROI od investing time in marketing is pretty low unless you have massive brand recognition in my experience
i was searching the web for over one hour now for a usable twitter stats tool that would also let me export the results. with a topsy pro trial you can only view the results but not export the info. also, twitter results in topsy seem to be limited to 2010. are there really no alternatives to topsy?