Why is Twitter Search missing some tweets and not others?

March 21, 2010 6:33 AM

Why does Twitter search find some tweets but not others?

I've noticed something about Twitter that's rather weird. Hopefully, I'm just doing something wrong and y'all can help set me straight.

Here is a tweet I posted:
http://twitter.com/merubin/statuses/10742974492

It was retweeted by a friend:
http://twitter.com/augieray/status/10743275295

Via Twitter Search (nee Summize) I find that two others re-tweeted Augie's retweet:
http://tinyurl.com/yl4omnc

Here's my question: Why does my friend's original retweet not show up in search results? I've noticed this with a lot of other tweets as well. For some random reason, they do not show up in search. They also do not show up in results forwarded from SocialOomph, Tweetlater, and other tweet trackers.

Normally, this wouldn't be a problem. But if I have to track certain keywords (like for a client), it's rather bothersome that some tweets don't show up in search for what appears to be a random reason.

Is this random goofiness on Twitter's part? Or is there something I'm not understanding?

posted by zooropa to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I don't know about the cause but as a remedy for the actual issue you could use tracking tools instead, e.g. Hootsuite. Have a check whether they have the full story...
posted by oxit at 6:59 AM on March 21, 2010

Response by poster: Actually, I use Hootsuite as my full-time Twitter client. It misses tweets, too.
posted by zooropa at 11:38 AM on March 21, 2010

Twitter's help pages have had this listed as a known issue for a long time now.
posted by IndigoRain at 12:29 PM on March 21, 2010

In my experience Twitter search randomly ignores between 30-40% of tweets. Additionally, some accounts are completely excluded, mostly spammers and suspended accounts.
posted by lsemel at 8:32 PM on March 21, 2010