Four Free Social Media Search Engines

Social media search engines offer real-time results (image licensed by Colleen Collins)

Updated Jan. 9, 2016

Why Search Social Media?

In a nutshell: Social media search tools offer real-time, niche results. Some require that users log in and register via email addresses — rather than provide your personal email address (which could be sold to a third-party vendor), consider using a disposable or masked email address. You can read more about such services in “Protecting Your Privacy: Using Disposable and Masked Email Services.”

Four Social Media Search Engines

The searches listed in this post are free with some offering premium plans for a fee.

SmashFuse: Immediate real-time results in social media sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo and others. Easy-to-view layout with share buttons.

SocialMention: Real-time search in over a hundred media properties, from blogs to comments to images. It also provides social media analysis broken down by Strength, Sentiment, Passion, Reach, Top Users, Top Hashtags and Sources.

Social Searcher: Searches content in social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ in real time. You can also sign up for “monitoring” that includes history, advanced analytics, increased email alerts and more.

#tagboard: This free web services lets you simultaneously search for hashtags on a variety of social media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, and Google+. It also offers pay-for services, which are geared more to corporations than individuals.

Social Media Search Sites That Are No More

Sorry to see these sites go…

Topsy: This search engine, which offered real-time results and analytics for Twitter, had been around since 2008, but Apple closed it down on December 15, 2015.

Kgbpeople.com: This used to be one of our favorite search sites, which checked a variety of social networking sites, search engines, websites, photos and more. The search results used to be comprehensive, but these days are slim to nonexistent.

Kurrently.com: Formerly combined results from Twitter and Facebook in an easy-to-read format organized by date stamp, but the site is now dead.

WhosTalkin: This social media search tool once searched conversations in over 60 social media gateways. Although the site is still up, search attempts go into an endless “search spin.” We recently learned WhosTalkin was sold to a private company in 2011.

Have a great weekend, Writing PIs

All rights reserved by Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman. Any use of the content (including images owned by Colleen Collins and/or Shaun Kaufman) requires specific, written authority. Please do not copy or distribute any images noted as licensed; any images noted as being in the public domain are yours to steal.

Four Comprehensive Search Engines for Social Networks

This article now available in How Do Private Eyes Do That? available on Kindle and Nook.

Free Online Resources for Backgrounds, Phone Numbers, Professional Licensure and Real-Time Social Media

Updated June 16, 2012

Here’s a few, free online look-ups for background information, reverse phone number look-ups, professional licensure and real-time social media.

Find online information about a person. Because currently the most comprehensive, public search engine is Google, use it to find online information about an individual. Type the person’s name and any other identifying information, such as “Sally Smith watercolor artist”, in the Google browser, press the “Search” button and view the results, which show blogs, websites and other online sources in which that name and information displays.

Conduct a reverse phone number search. If an unknown phone number shows up on your caller ID, it’s easy to run a free reverse phone number search using Google. Enter the phone number in the format 123-456-5555 in the Google browser, and press the “Search” button. Google displays all online sources that contain that phone number, such as in blogs, websites, online resumes and online ads.

Verify someone’s professional license. BRB Publications offers a free online database to verify professional licenses by state. Go to Verifyprolicense.com, select a state, select the agency and follow the instructions.

Conduct a real-time social media search. Socialmention is a real-time search engine that examines online social media such as blogs, events, images, news, video and social networking sites. Conduct a search with any identifier, such as a name, phone number, email address, username.

Have a great weekend, Writing PIs

Related articles

• The Uses Of Reverse Phone Lookup On The Net. (boldstate.com)