Hi. I’m pulling some data down from the REST API as part of some University research. At present, I’m just having a look, so I’ve got a short list of query terms that I’m iterating through and hitting the search/tweets endpoint with.
Some of the results don’t actually have the query that I’m searching for in the Tweet text, however. For example, a search for the term “@V_and_A evocative” returns tweets with text such as: “Visitors want to see objects, not books at the wall - @danamuses about exhibition design @V_and_A: http://t.co/lN9rsCuQpG via @TanjaPraske”
Now I can think of three of reasons why this might be happening (though there could be many others):
1: The search/tweets function searches more than just the text of Tweets (e.g. conversations that the Tweet was a bigger part of, perhaps? Or the bios of the Tweeter and those mentioned in it, maybe?)
2: There’s a synonym ring / query expansion deal going on at Twitter’s end that’s automagically expanding my query for me? (Not sure where the synonym of “evocative” is in the text I posted above, though…
3: The search doesn’t work very well.
I get the same odd answers when I search for this query by hand via the Twitter website, too…
Anyone know anything more about this?
