In an earlier post, Bug Alert: Some Twitter Hash Tags Don't Show Up in Searches, I mentioned one reader who was having this problem, but I wasn't able to find other examples.

Since then, I've seen many accounts of this problem and not only with hash tags. Apparently lots of people's regular tweets aren't showing up in searches either. In some cases, they had shown up previously but suddenly stopped.

The missing hash tags can be particularly frustrating because a lot of people use them for things like events, where you want others to be able to follow the tweets from those events in real time.

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Update 01/26/10: Thanks to reader Tata, who posted a comment pointing out that if your tweets are protected (i.e. you're limiting them only to people you approve to follow you), they will not show up in a search. Can't believe I never thought of that! If your tweets aren't protected and you're still having the problem, read on...

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I still haven't figured out exactly what's causing this problem but, from some things I've read, it seems to have something to do with a Twitter cache (not the cache in your browser) that needs to be cleared out.

So how do you do that?

Theoretically, you could submit a request through Twitter Support. However, the few times I've done this, I've never received a reply and after a few weeks, my request was closed out with no resolution.

However, I have discovered a very nice and helpful person, @delbius, who works at Twitter. If you send her a tweet (add @delbius to your tweet) and simply say what isn't showing up, she will see if it's something she can fix. Delbius doesn't actually work for Support so she has also said you can send tweets to a couple of people who do, @charles and @lukester, and they can also help you.

Now, it would be best if you picked just one of the above to contact rather than blanketing your request to all three. I would also suggest keeping your tweet brief and to the point (like you have any other choice with Twitter!) along the lines of, "@charles My hash tag #tech4ludds is not showing up in searches. Can you help?" and then wait a couple of days before following up. (If the tag is related to an event going on at the moment, you could specify that as well to indicate a sense of urgency.)

While I certainly don't want to overload these people to the point that they stop helping anyone, maybe if they get enough requests, the company will finally figure out a way to solve the problem in the first place.

If you try this yourself, I'd love to hear if it works for you. And if you know of any other solutions to the problem, please pass those along as well!

Posted in How To, QuickTips, Search, Social Media, Twitter