“Search Within People You Follow”, Autocomplete and Related Results Added to Twitter

Twitter has updated its search algarythm, allowing users to search within tweets of people they follow, to autocomplete (finally), and to offer related results.

These updates are all designed to help the user more accurately find what they are looking for even if they don't have the exact keyword.

Additions include:

• Spelling corrections: If a user misspells a search term, Twitter will now automatically show results for what it believes is the intended query.
• Related suggestions: If a user searches for a topic with multiple terms, Twiller will mow provide relevant suggestions.
• Results with real names and usernames: When a user searches for a name they'll see results that include real names and account username.
• Results from people followed: In addition to seeing ‘All’ or ‘Top’ Tweets for a search, users will now see Tweets about a given topic from only the people they follow when ‘People you follow’ is selected.

The announcement is the latest in an ongoing stream of enhancements including updates to the Discover and Trends designed to make Twitter more of a research ans relevancy tool. While the improvements sound great, they still need some refining. A search for the misspelling only pulls up the correct spelling in the auto-complete until a user gets to where the misspelling starts. It also won’t show related result the way Google’s “Showing results for…” and “did you mean” do.

Twitter search has long been behind other website's internal search engines which have featured autocomplete and suggestions. Twitter is sure to improve the features, and unlock the potential of exploring the real-time trends and conversations.