In the past few weeks, people have been desperately turning to Twitter asking for leads regarding Covid resources such as oxygen cylinders, covid beds and other assistance like meals for patients, academic help and commute. India recorded over three lakh cases on Monday, for the fifth day in a row, taking the country’s caseload to 1.73 crores and 1.95 lakh deaths. There is a lot of information present on the microblogging site and sometimes it becomes difficult to filter through it, as the information could be old or unverified. Meanwhile, people are also sharing several guides on how to do a more nuanced search for resources on Twitter.

 

Now, Twitter is rolling out its advanced search feature that will help users look for specific requirements. They can narrow down the search to place, hashtags and how recent the tweet was posted using the advanced search feature. Users should note the more specific they are, the more likely they are to find information that is accurate and helpful.

 

Twitter allows users to use the advanced search function that lets users search for tweets containing specific keywords, phrases, hashtags, a specific language, geographic location, date, and a specific Twitter handle or person. Users can search for these things using Search Operators to find exactly what they need.

Here’s how to use search filters on Twitter:

  • There is a basic search where you search words in the search bar on Twitter and all the tweets containing those words. For example if you searched for oxygen cylinder in Delhi, Twitter will show you all the tweets with those words but they might not be in that specific order.
  • In advanced search, you have to use double quotes and some other characters. If you search words like “Hospital beds in Delhi”, “oxygen bed” or “SOS Delhi” in quotes, Twitter search will show you all tweets with those words in that particular order.
  • To find tweets posted from a specific state, city, you can type “Hospital beds” near:”Delhi” (With colon and double quotes), and to see all tweets from the specific area in a city or state, type near:Delhi within:15mi (without space) in the search bar.
  • Twitter users are mostly using hashtags such as #COVIDSOS, #CovidResources, #COVIDHelp, etc. these days to share helpline numbers, websites and other important information. You can search for any specific hashtag and location, for example – “#COVIDSOS” near:”Delhi”. You’ll be shown the top tweets automatically, if you want to find out the latest information click on Latest under the search bar.

Here are some examples of tweets that you’ll find with Twitter filters: