If you see “Nothing to see here – yet” in Quote Tweets, try searching tweet’s URL #MildlyUsefulInfo

tl;dr: Grab a Tweet’s URL, stick it in Twitter’s search bar – it should show you all publicly visible tweets containing that URL. A workaround for Quote Tweets that are otherwise missing. You’ll probably uncover a few more if you delete the https:// bit at the start.

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If you click on the Quote Tweets link below a Tweet (to see what others are saying about a Tweet) but get “Nothing to see here – yet” (2023: it now says “No Quote Tweets yet) you may be able to find some of those quote tweets by searching for the tweet’s URL directly (easiest on a laptop but also doable on a phone, see below).

2023’s “No Quote Tweets yet” – Twitter’s alert that tells you that a Tweet hasn’t been quoted. But quite often, it has!

Some of the quote tweets may be invisible because they’re from from locked accounts, or from accounts that have blocked your account (or that you have blocked), or may have been unQTed, or may contain content that Twitter has hidden from search (including largely duplicated material). There may be other technical reasons I don’t know about. Searching for the Tweet’s URL may well show you any publicly available ones. If you also run a search on Twitter while logged out (or in a private browsing tab) you may find some more.

What Twitter said in 2021 when it told you there were no Quote Tweets – “Nothing to see here – yet”.

Worked example on laptop (Firefox on desktop browser)

An example Tweet from me, from 2018, was about a baffling road sign I saw. which made me laugh. Apparently it has been Quote Tweeted four times. I know for a fact that I’ve QTed it myself.

Copy of my original Tweet which said it had 4 tweets. Image shows a dark blue road sign which forms an arrow pointing left, to Masthouse Terrace Pier, however a white arrow is painted on pointing in the opposite direction (the correct direction at the time the photo was taken). It’s not always pointing in the correct direction though because the road sign can actually move around the central pole and points randomly. What fun!

Clicking on the 4 Quote Tweets (see bottom of picture above) brings up the “Nothing to see here – yet” notice (for me at least, it might show them to you).

If you’re doing this on a laptop / desktop you might also notice that the link / URL changes, with the addition of “/retweets/with_comments” at the end.

So if the Retweets/With_Comments format doesn’t work, try instead searching for the tweet’s link and see what comes up. In this instance plugging my Tweet’s URL into Twitter search brings up eight Quote Tweets, most of which are by me.

If it doesn’t work try taking out the https:// from what you enter in the search bar.

Searching for tweet’s that contain that link (ie, inclue the URL of the original tweet) is just another way of sneaking up on quote tweets, if Twitter’s own QT interface is showing you nothing.

How to find a Tweet’s URL aka How to link to a Tweet by URL

URL = link = address = hyperlink (and stands for Uniform Resource Locator, which means it has its own web page)

Twitter has advice on how to find the link of any given tweet with different devices: Android, iPhone and desktop. Click this link or the picture below to visit the help file. You can then paste the URL into the search bar (Ctrl+V on desktop, tap in the search bar on an iPhone and wait for paste option to appear, don’t know for Android I’m afraid, I assume it’s similar).

Composite image of How to find a Tweet’s URL with screenshots of the instructions for three different platforms

But… you need to tidy up the link you’ve just copied

I’ve found that the Twitter phone app automatically adds “?/s=21” at the end of the link. Before you search, delete that and also the https:// part at the beginning, otherwise it might not work (no idea why).

For some reason the link, as copied, brings up no search results, but pruning out the start and end makes it work fine!

So on a phone I’d just be searching for “twitter… 537” (see images below) and not “http…. 537?s=21” which is what you get once you ‘Copy link to Tweet’.

The upper of the two links shown above is what you get when you copy the link from the Twitter phone app, below it is the improved searchable version, with bits deleted at start and end, shown again in pic below as pasted into the search bar. The links are only yellow here because I’ve pasted them into iPhone’s notepad and that’s the default colour.

Incidentally I don’t know what the s of s=21 stands for in the pic above with yellow links but it’s one of the things that seems to activate the display of “More Tweets”, which are often completely irrelevant. If I ever see it in the address bar, I always delete it.

Old screenshots of how to find a Tweet’s link for historic interest 🙂

1. How to find a Tweet’s URL (browser)

If you’re on a browser then clicking on a Tweet will open it up in a page, you can grab the URL from the address bar. Or you can find any tweet in search results or on a profile page (or whatever you’re looking at) and get the URL from the timestamp. A timestamp might say “2h” if the tweet was sent two hours ago, or have the date and time if an older tweet.

2. How to find a Tweet’s URL (phone app)

If you’re on the Twitter app on a phone find the tweet then look for the upload icon (tray with up arrow pointing from it) to get the Copy link to tweet option.