Have you ever wondered how to use the power of Google to find people to follow on Twitter? Take a look at this custom search string. I wish I could take credit for discovering it, but I can’t.
While browsing Twitter, I came across a tweet that had the following Google search string:
site:twitter.com bio location tx 100…1000000 followers -400
Unfortunately, I don’t remember who originally posted this.
If you find this article please let me know so I can give it proper credit. With that being said, let’s take a closer look at what that search string does.
Here’s the breakdown:
“site:twitter.com” Says to search the site twitter.com
“bio tx location” Tells the search engine to search the “biography” section for the location of “tx”, also known as Texas.
“100…1000000 followers” Says to find people who have between 100 and 1 million followers
“-400” is a code that tells the search engine to exclude certain words from the result. It is automatically added to the string when you press the “find” button. I don’t know or understand why, it just is.
This little “-400” snippet could be useful if you want to exclude people with the phrase “make money online” or “look at my photos” or something similar on their profile. I’m not saying you should, I’m just pointing out that the option is there.
In case you haven’t guessed, the string is for an advanced Google search. Most people never use the advanced search feature, but it’s there for the taking. Every once in a while, I come across something like this and I’m reminded of why I think the big G rocks.
For fun, I suggest you run this search in your own city and see who shows up. I found a lot of interesting people to follow using that little search string, you might too. Let me know if this works for you in the comments.