New Twitter ‘Search Subscribe’ feature coming soon?

You may soon have a new way to get push notifications from Twitter whenever someone’s tweets match a search query that you specify. 

The Twitter feature is called “Search Subscribe.”

Twitter has not confirmed if or when the feature will roll out to users. It was first spotted by Dylan Rousse, an Android developer, in the latest pre-release version of Twitter’s mobile app.

How it works. When you do a search in the Twitter app, you will see a bell icon next to the search bar. Tapping that bell will bring up a message: “You’re subscribed to receive push notifications for Tweets about [insert your search query here]”.

Similar to TweetDeck. TweetDeck, which is also owned by Twitter, gives you an option to add a column. “Search” is a column type. So if you put in the search term “SEO” you would see every tweet that matches “SEO” in that column. Or, you can filter those results by location, authors and engagement levels. 

Push notifications. Twitter lets you enable or disable a variety of notifications. This includes mentions, replies, retweets, new followers, direct messages and more. To date, search has never been one of these options. 

For Twitter Blue? We previously reported that an edit button is coming to Twitter. But if and when that does finally launch, it will be part of the paid Twitter Blue service. Early speculation is that Search Subscribe would be part of Twitter Blue.

Why we care. If Search Subscribe works similarly to TweetDeck, this could be helpful for monitoring any keywords that are of interest to you. However, it could also become incredibly noisy so you’ll want to choose your search terms wisely.

About The Author

Danny Goodwin is Senior Editor of Search Engine Land. In addition to writing daily about SEO, PPC, and more for Search Engine Land, Goodwin also manages Search Engine Land’s roster of subject-matter experts. He also helps program our conference series, SMX – Search Marketing Expo. Prior to joining Search Engine Land, Goodwin was Executive Editor at Search Engine Journal, where he led editorial initiatives for the brand. He also was an editor at Search Engine Watch. He has spoken at many major search conferences and virtual events, and has been sourced for his expertise by a wide range of publications and podcasts.