Twitter Search Snub

For past two months to the people who use Twitter, I was not alive. To them I wasn’t on Twitter, I didn’t have 600+ followers and I had not tweeted more than 5000 times. I was invisible, and I may aswell have not been tweeting at all.

You see Twitter is all about finding people you have things in common with, and whats the best way to find them? Search! Searching for topics you enjoy will bring up that topic but from other peoples Twitter. There you can click into their profile and follow them, therefore building a group of people you have similarities to rather than just people you know (like what Facebook is). Its primarily a network builder for the things that matter to you.

So about early April I noticed  plugin I made using the Twitter API wasnt updating my tweets. I thought it was just a general problem with Twitter Search, and that it would be fixed within the week, so I just went on, tweeting without worry. However, looking at http://search.twitter.com/search?q=from:miralize 12 days later, I still had the same problem. None of my tweets were now showing in the search. So i put in a Support ticket.

My from:miralize search function is not working for the last 12 days. None of my tweets are visible in Twitter Search. Please help me

…or something like that. And I got a very nice reply from Lukester 6 days later:

Hi ,

***This is most likely your issue***
I’m Not Appearing in the Find People Search
read more about this here: http://help.twitter.com/forums/31935/entries/38518
Please leave your comments there. We hope to have this resolved soon.

My name is Luke and I’m going to try to help you. I know you’re frustrated and I’m sorry for the general instructions, but I don’t want you to wait too long, so to help you as quickly and efficiently as possible, I’m going to first ask you to try to help your self . We have a large amount of requests and really want everyone to receive help so they can continue to happily use Twitter!

I’ve marked this as ‘solved’ for my own purposes. If this info doesn’t solve your issue, all you need to do is reply to this email and it will re-open the ticket. No need to start a whole new ticket or re-describe your problem. Just hit reply and send. I’ll be able to see your initial request.

Below, I’ve included a bunch of common issues with links to their solutions. Please read the solution and try to fix your issue. Please do not write back to thank me if you are able to resolve this issue based on the content in this email. If I don’t hear back from you, I’ll assume that you worked it out and that you’re happy!

NOTE: When experiencing issues online, it is always a good idea to clear your browser’s cache, and try again.

Frequently Asked Questions (if you haven’t read these, please do)

……………………..

Luke
Twitter Support
——————————

……………………..

That generic spammy ugly message above proved two things.

• Twitter Suport sucks
• I’d have to get help from others

So first thing I did was think of possible reasons why people were not included from Search. I didn’t spam, I wasnt a bot, and my profile wasnt private. So I tried setting my profile to private then back to pubilc but to no avail. So I gave up.

Two months on, still inconspicuous to the people of Twitter, I needed to get back on Search. Now looking through Google I noticed that this was getting more and more coverage. Hundreds, if not thousands, were not showing up in Search. Finally I added my name to this http://twitter.zendesk.com/forums/31935/entries/38518, but that still didnt work. I sent several new request tickets, but they were all automatically closed without any reply.

This morning I saw a tweet by the prolific tweeter @mayhemstudios

RT @Iconic88: @ModelSupplies: Help! I Don’t Show Up In Twitter Search! How to fix it! http://bit.ly/4Qbqy

That gave me this:

… unless your problem is fixed, go to status.twitter.com to see if there is any current problem at Twitter. Check “Known Issues”. If there is no mention of a problem with search, go ahead and file a support ticket. You could say something like, “I am gone from search and believe I need to have my cache cleared.” Please be patient and wait overnight for a response. If you have waited “too long” and cannot stand the pain any longer, send ONE @reply to @delbius with that same message and include your ticket number to help keep duplicate requests to a minimum. Please know this is her personal account,  so please do not bother her unless you absolutely must. PLEASE DO NOT EVER ask for RTs on any support issue or message to Delbius! …

So I sent a single tweet to @delbius and by 4pm GMT my Tweets were now showing in Twitter. Sucess

So I’m back in Twitter Search, but there is still many problems.

• Twitter needs to get its act together.A company this big cant afford to be making mistakes like that, especially at this stage while new visitors flock to it.
• They need to improve the users search experience. I got absolutely no help from Twitter.com/support, rather the community helped me.
• They cant improve without first employing more people. To do that they need to start earning money