How to find tweets posted from a specific location?

Some users on Twitter send their exact location, either intentionally or unintentionally, when they post tweets. These geographic locations are valuable to intelligence analysts because they can provide information about where a target user may live.

Every user on Twitter has the option to turn on location data sharing when sending tweets. When this feature was enabled, accurate GPS coordinates were sent, revealing the exact location of the tweeter. This information is valuable to investigators and analysts.

Determining the GPS coordinates of a location

Step 1: Navigate to https://www.google.com/maps and enter the address where you want to map the tweet in the search field. Here is an example of "Amsterdam Central" location.

Step 2: Right-click the red location icon and the first line will show its GPS coordinates.

Step 3: Click on the GPS coordinates to copy it to the clipboard.



Enter a GPS location in Twitter to find messages from a specific location

Once you have copied the GPS coordinates of the location you want to investigate, next map the tweets sent from that location by following these steps.

Step 1: Open Twitter (you don't even need to be logged in).

Step 2: Enter the following code into the Twitter search bar, replacing the latitude (LAT) and longitude (LON) of the GPS coordinates with your own copied coordinates: geocode:LAT,LON,0.5km.

You must make sure there are no spaces in the code and select the size of the search area in the last digit after the comma. If you enter 0.5km, this means that you will see tweets within a 500m radius from the location you entered. For example, let's enter 500 meters from the center of Amsterdam: geocode:52.37917783420181,4.900275626541713,0.5km.

Once entered, you will see tweets up to 500 meters from the center of Amsterdam.

The tweets you see come from users who have GPS location sharing turned on for the particular message you see. If a user turns off their location in a later tweet, you may still be able to find some tweets that have location sharing enabled at that time. However, you will not see tweets from users who have disabled location sharing.