# Using Google Reader to create a searchable archive of Twitter mentions

My solution for extracting site activity data from Delicious isn’t going so well (their API is letting me down). Instead I thought I’d share how I use Google Reader to create a searchable archive of Twitter mentions. It’s not particularly a new trick and [you’ll find a number of similar how-to’s](http://www.bing.com/search?q=google+reader+archive+tweets) so this post is more about awareness raising.

Here’s the recipe:

1. Fire up Google Reader and click on the ‘Subscribe’ button
2. In the box enter [http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=*yourusername*+-from%3A*yourusername*&show\_user=true](http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=yourusername+-from%3Ayourusername&show_user=true "http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=mhawksey+-from%3Amhawksey&show_user=true") replacing the text yourusername with your twitter screen name The search is basically looking for all mentions of yourusername –from:yourusername. If you want to include things you tweet just remove +-from%3A*yourusername* from the url
3. Click Add and it’ll start pulling in @replies and @mentions
 
To search for those useful links people sent you but you’ve forgot enter a term in the search box and select the feed you just created.

![Google Reader search tweets](https://hawksey.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/image9.png "image")

I’m not sure how many tweets Google Reader will cache (I’ve seen it mentioned that all are saved) so you don’t have to worry about the usually 7 day Twitter search limit. This solution is also not limited to mentions you can use any search operator you like.