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Search for Deleted Tweets: Finding Removed Posts on Twitter

Ochai Emmanuel

June 22, 2023 | 11 min read

People delete their Twitter posts because they do not want them around anymore. Still, this hasn’t stopped other users from trying to find them. The interest surrounding removed Twitter posts could stem from an investigation, an inquiry, or a simple argument. Thus, many questions exist among Twitter users about how to search for deleted tweets. This could involve finding your own removed tweets and that of someone else. 

The internet offers a good number of ways to search for deleted tweets. These involve third-party applications, internet archives, search engine features, and Twitter files. Your most convenient choice when trying to find removed tweets would depend on the timeframe regarding the tweet’s deletion. It also depends on whose tweet you’re trying to find and the attention surrounding such tweets. Therefore, this guide covers the topic of searching for deleted tweets. 

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How To Search for Deleted Tweets: Techniques for Accessing Removed Tweets

Usually, deleted Twitter posts are supposed to disappear from the internet. However, things could work a little unusually in cases like these. For instance, there are ways for users to search and find these removed posts conveniently. There are several options if you’re thinking about how to search for deleted tweets. Let’s dive into that. 

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How To Search for Deleted Tweets Using Google Searches

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The Google Search Engine provides a convenient way to search for deleted tweets. The search engine caches some web pages, allowing users to access even removed ones. While going through your Google search results, you may have noticed the tiny arrows beside some search result items. These arrows are indications that the search engine has saved a cache of such pages. 

When trying to search for deleted tweets, this technique works better on prominent and popular Twitter accounts. This is because Google is likelier to cache popular web pages than pages with minimal interactions and traffic. Also, you can find only recently removed tweets this way, as tweets disappear from the Google cache after some time. 

To find deleted tweets with the Google cache feature, run a Google search of their Twitter handles along with the word “Twitter.” From the search results, you would see their recent tweets. The tiny downward arrow beside some search results indicates that Google has cached those items. Click the arrow; another button will appear saying “Cached.” Click the button, and Google will load the cached version of the tweet. 

From the cached version of the tweet, you would see the time and date on which the author published the tweet. The subsequent appearance of another cache overrides the current cache data. So, taking screenshots if you find the desired results is always a good idea. Otherwise, you may not find that tweet eventually. 

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How To Search for Deleted Tweets From Your Twitter Archive

Your Twitter archive contains all your Twitter data, including your tweets, retweets, likes, and direct messages. Because of this, you can use it as a convenient reservoir of old tweets, including some which you have removed. Thus, it is a straightforward way to search for deleted tweets from your account. It is a good idea for users to request and download copies of their Twitter archives occasionally. 

How does this work? Twitter allows users to download their information into their devices, which they can access offline. Even after returning to your profile and deleting specific tweets, your archive will always contain the tweets you had. This way, you can always retain your tweets even if they are no longer on the platform. 

After requesting your archive, Twitter allows you to download it in a zipped file. You can access the archive in different formats, such as HTML and CSV. Subsequently, you can open the HTML document in a browser while accessing the CSV file in a spreadsheet reader. These files allow you to browse your Twitter posts and search for deleted tweets. 

How To Search for Tweets by Date: Getting Your Older Twitter Posts

What options should you consider besides searching for deleted tweets if you’re looking for tweets you made years ago? While it isn’t feasible to scroll down your timeline until you find the tweets you’re searching for, viable options exist. Browsing your tweets based on date is not as complex as you may have imagined. Here is what you should do if you’re concerned about how to search for tweets by date. 

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Using Twitter’s In-App Search To Find Tweets by Date

Although Twitter’s in-app search feature may seem pretty basic, it can perform some specialized search activities. For instance, it uses specific functions to draw search results based on date. Of course, it does not allow users to search for deleted tweets. However, it can trace older tweets and obtain the needed results. 

Twitter’s search feature uses three functions, “From,” “Since,” and “Until,” to draw tweets by date. It involves choosing the tweet author’s account and the time range you want your results to fall. Launch the Twitter application on your mobile device or open the website on your browser. Next, log into your account, head to the search page, and open the search bar. Next, type the account’s username and dates into the search bar in this format:

from:[@username] since:year-month-day until:year-month-day 

For instance, if you’re searching for Twitter’s tweets between April and June 2021, type this into the search bar:

from: Twitter since:2021-04-01 until:2021-06-01 

Hit search, and the application will display results containing tweets from the Twitter account that fall within this period. You can always toggle the search requests to fit your needs. However, this search function only works for the last 3,200 tweets on a Twitter profile. This, you can use other methods to search your archived tweets by date. 

Using Twitter’s Advanced Search To Find Tweets by Date

Twitter’s advanced search is another important feature on the platform that allows users to search their tweets by date. Again, this feature does not allow users to search for deleted tweets. However, it helps find older tweets that have not exceeded Twitter’s 3,200 post limit. To use this application, visit the Twitter website on your computer’s browser. 

Log into your account, click the search bar at the top right corner of your homepage, and run a search. From the search results page, click the blue “advanced search” link below the search filters on your screen’s right end. The website will now open the advanced search dialog box on your screen. From here, you can input the designated search parameters. 

First, you can input the words contained in the tweet. Here, you can input the entire tweet, words that form part of the tweet, and the hashtags you use in the tweet. You’d have to write the author’s username in the accounts section of the advanced search dialog box. You can also write the mentioned accounts. Scroll to the “Dates” section, and choose your starting and ending dates. 

Finally, click the search button on the top right corner of the dialog box, and Twitter will display your results. Twitter’s advanced search offers a lot of advantages. It allows users to perform highly specialized searches on the platform. Nonetheless, it also has its limitations. For instance, you cannot search for deleted tweets, and you cannot search for archived tweets with this feature.

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How To Find Deleted Tweets From Someone Else: Easy Ways To Search for Deleted Tweets From Others

Just like you can find your deleted tweets, you can also find someone else’s. You may be concerned about how to find deleted tweets from someone else because of an inquiry or an investigation. However, it is primarily to find someone else’s removed tweets using the Internet Archive and other independent websites. While these websites also allow you to search for deleted tweets, this is also a pivotal role. 

How To Search for Deleted Tweets From Others With the Internet Archive

The Internet Archive, or the Wayback Machine as people popularly know it, is a digital archive of the Internet. This archive crawls the internet, saving snapshots of web pages repeatedly. It targets popular web pages, including specific pages on social media websites like Twitter and others. The Internet Archive is ideal for people who want to search for deleted tweets from influential individuals and organizations. Although other services like Archive. Today also offers similar services; the Internet Archive is far more popular.

To use this archive, visit its website and enter the full URL to the Twitter profile in the search bar. You can get the link by visiting their profiles in your browser and copying the link from the address bar. After pasting the link in the search bar, click the “Browse History” button, and the website will display a calendar. This calendar indicates the dates on which the machine archive that particular webpage. 

The dates highlighted in blue are the days on which the archive saved snapshots of the webpage. So, hovering above a date opens a list of all the snapshots available for that day. Click a snapshot to open and view the page as it was on that particular day. This way, you can search for deleted tweets from other users and obtain your desired results.

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How To Search for Deleted Tweets From Others With Search Engines

Sometimes, running Google searches for removed tweets brings the needed results. This is because there is always a lot of attention on controversial tweets, especially from public figures. With the emergence of wild tweets, many media websites quickly jump on the news, sharing these tweets. So, you can always search for deleted tweets on search engines like Google and Yahoo. News and gossip blogs may have captured them.

To do this, open your browser and head to the search engine homepage. Search the name of the tweet’s author and the topic they tweeted about. The results would capture the blog posts about that particular tweet from where you can find the removed Twitter posts. You can also access screenshots of specific tweets right on Twitter. This is easier when the deleted tweet has previously raised a lot of dust. 

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Can You Search for Deleted Tweets From Removed Accounts?

Usually, tweets from deleted Twitter accounts also disappear from the social media platform. What is the recommendation if there’s a need to search for deleted tweets from such accounts? Can you search for deleted tweets from removed accounts? Although you can no longer find tweets like this on the platform, the internet provides several options. For instance, the Wayback Machine is an effective option. Google searches are another useful option in this case. 

The Wayback Machine is the most prominent option for someone trying to recover tweets from deleted accounts. Although this machine does not archive all tweets, it saves tweets from prominent tweeps. This allows users to comprehensively follow up on old deleted accounts, seeing how they appeared when the machine saved them. However, these saved pages are screenshots that do not allow users to perform Twitter activity. 

Despite dealing with deleted accounts, you can recover the profile link. You can do this by replacing the [@username] in the link https://twitter.com/[@username]. You can then search the link in the Wayback Machine and browse your results. 

Screenshots of tweets may still be available on the internet despite the accounts being gone. So, sometimes, you’d require deep internet searches to find these screenshots. However, a tweet’s availability depends on how famous the author is and how controversial the tweet is. At TweetEraser, we’ve designed a simple, easy-to-use web application to filter and delete tweets in bulk. This straightforward application lets users upload and process their Twitter archives, affecting mass and specialized deletion operations. TweetEraser is an ideal option for users trying to clean their Twitter timeline without cluttering it with promotional content. Start filtering and cleaning your Twitter timeline today!

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