Finding wins with Social Searcher

I’ve known about Social Searcher for a while, but have never been keen on using it as the site itself was clumsy and difficult to navigate with all the ugly advertising. Today on Facebook I noticed a friend sharing a link to a new Google Social Search at www.social-searcher.com/google-social-search. Intrigued, I thought I’d better check it out…

Social Searcher will search Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Pinterest, Instagram and Linked In – use the right search terms and it can be invaluable in tracking down winning announcements you know nothing about! I tested this user-friendly version today and discovered a bottle of champagne I’d won on Twitter – the promoter had announced ‘Di Coke’ as the winner instead of tagging me as @superluckydi so I’d missed it.

It’s simple to use – put your search terms in the box at the top at www.social-searcher.com/google-social-search/. Here are a few suggestions (replace ‘Di Coke’ or superluckydi with your Facebook name or Twitter name of course!) but there are lots of combinations you can try.

• Congratulations “Di Coke” OR superluckydi OR @superluckydi
• “Congratulations to Di Coke” / “Congratulations to superluckydi”
• Winner “Di Coke” OR superluckydi OR @superluckydi

The results will appear in columns for each social network – by default they are sorted by Relevance but you need to change that to Date – then you’ll see your most recent mentions at the top of the results.

Instagram doesn’t seem to give any results, even though I know those terms have been used on my photos – so it’s not perfect, but the Facebook results are useful. Keep in mind that you’ll get all sorts of mentions in here, particularly if you like and comment regularly on Facebook, or if you have a very common name – but hopefully you might spot some wins too!

Best of luck with your social search – let me know if you find anything good. And if you do have a common name – consider adding a middle name or initial to make it unique!