What is the source: attribute of a tweet sent from a tweet button using the Twitter Search API?

Question

I'm trying to use Twitter search to find all mentions of a word that DIDN'T come from a "tweet this" button. I'm trying to build a stream of all brand mentions, but I don't want to sift through all of the retweets coming from our blog, which uses Twitter's button.

As a first step, I tried looking searching for all of the tweets that came from my personal account, filtering by source:txt. It showed all of the tweets I texted in. Then source:web. It showed all of the tweets I entered on twitter.com.

But then I tried searching with source:twitterbutton. Nothing. Then source:tweetbutton. Nothing. Same with source:tweet button. I tried searching through all of Twitter's documentation on the Tweet button to see what the source: attribute is, but couldn't find anything.

When I go through my stream of tweets without filtering for the source, I see some that say via Tweet Button so I know they exist, but I can't seem to find the right source: operator to find them automatically.

FYI: I'm using the Twitter Search API Method.

Bonus points to whoever can tell me how to negate a source (return everything EXCEPT that source)

Answer 1

The source is Tweet Button. The correct way to search for it will be source:tweet_button. Searching by source is very unreliable though (especially for multiword sources). Filtering by source requires that you include a keyword so you can't search just by source.

To negate a source you add a - in front like this google -source:web.

Update: Multi-word sources are now _ (underscore) separated.

Answer 2

I started tweeting with the fine folks over at Tweet Deck since their application lets you look for ones that came from the Tweet Button. It turns out I was only one character away. D'oh!

Use source:tweet_button to get only tweets from Tweet Buttons. And, as Abraham mentioned, all you need is a - before the parameter for it to negate that source. Example search.

Thanks for all the assistance! Especially from @DesktopDeck!