Twitter Tips: Searching for tweets by location

If you use a Twitter client on a mobile device that includes a global positioning system (GPS) sensor, chances are that the client can use that information to update your Twitter location information. For example, the iPhone clients Twittelator Pro, Tweetie, and Twitterific can all take advantage of the GPS sensor in the iPhone 3G. Tweets you send are tagged with your current position.

So many Twitter updates have an associated location. (For tweets from people who haven’t specified their location or who’ve used some vague or jokey location, this information isn’t so useful.)If you’re interested in locating people who are tweeting near a particular location.

You can use Twitter Search to specify that location as well as a distance. For example, you could search for tweets that were sent within 10 miles of Kalamazoo, Michigan.Here are the steps to follow to search for tweets by location using the Advanced.


Search form:

1. Click the Advanced Search link in a Twitter search page. The Advanced Search page appears.

2. In the Near this Place text box, type the location.

3. Use the Within this Distance list to select a value. The choices are 1, 5, 10, 15, 25, 50, 100, 500, or 1000.

4. Select either Miles or Kilometers.

5. Click Search. Twitter displays a list of tweets that were sent within the specified distance
of the location.

To perform location-based searches from the Search box, you use two operators:

A: near: Use this operator followed by a place name to search for tweets sent from that
location.

B: within: Use this operator followed by a number followed by either mi (for miles) or km (for kilometers) to search for tweets within that distance of the location.

One advantage you get with using these operators is that you can use them on their own. For example, using near: on its own returns all the posts sent from just that location. Similarly, using within: on its own returns all the posts sent within the specified distance of your current location.Figure 6.19 shows a search query that looks for posts sent within 10 miles of Indianapolis, and I’ve also added the search term restaurant.

Posted in: Twitter