Twitter Search API - Unusable?

Question

After many tests, I've been unable to get the Twitter Search API to return more than 80% of tweets containing a specific keyword or hashtag. This is not related to the maximum number of results, one test involved a hashtag which had been tweeted 50 times and only 15 of them were returned by the Twitter Search API. The same results were returned when using Twitter's own search tool.

Is the Twitter Search API simply a tool for getting estimates and trends, rather than accurate data?

Has anyone found a way to capture 100% of tweets containing a specific keyword or hashtag?

Answer 1

Twitter filters search api for better results. Here is a quote from developer site:

Both the Streaming API and the Search API filter, and on some end-points, discard, statuses created by a small proportion of accounts based upon status quality metrics. For example, frequent and repetitious status updates may, in some instances, and in combination with other metrics, result in a different status quality score for a given account.

Search api simply returns a subset of the found tweets.