As you may have noticed when Twitter introduced its new homepage a few days ago, Twitter has a new feature that allows them to group together popular tweets. They say this is done algorithmically, and have an account to capture them all here. Now they’re just turned on this feature on for Twitter search, and its API.
As you can see in the search.twitter.com page (but not yet on Twitter.com’s own search), there are three pinned popular tweets at the top of the results (Twitter notes that it could be less than three, but that three is the max right now). Below each of these, you can see the number of times the tweet was retweeted, giving some indication of why it’s popular.
A message today sent from developer advocate Taylor Singletary to the Twitter development and API Google Groups lets everyone know about the change. He also seems to reveal the keys behind the popularity algorithm:
With this new project, we want to make real-time search even more valuable by surfacing the best tweets about a particular topic, by considering recency, but also the interactions on a tweet. This means analyzing the author’s profile, as well as the number times the tweet has been retweeted, favorited, replied, and more. It’s an evolving algorithm that we’ll be iterating on & tuning until practically the end of time.
Further, this search change is coming to the API too. Singletary says this feature will be opt-in for developers during this current phase. But it sounds like eventually this will be a standard part of the search API (that undoubtedly developers can choose to leave out if they want to). Here’s how the results will break down for those who do opt-in:
- mixed – receive both “popular tweets” and most recent tweets for the query. This is the equivalent of the future default behavior.
- popular – receive only “popular tweets” for the query.
- recent – receive only recent results for the query. This is the equivalent of the behavior you’ve come to expect until present
To make this new feature work, each tweet now has a new bit of metadata letting the search query know if it’s “popular” or “recent.” Singletary also notes that in the future other metadata layers may be added to further augment results.
Join the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist
Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector.
Join the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist
Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector.
That seems like a pretty interesting way to make Twitter search more useful and less filled with spam.
Update: Twitter has now added popular results to Twitter.com as well. Check out the screenshots below — it’s less obvious than search.twitter.com but the metadata is there.
[thanks Alex]
M.G. Siegler is a general partner at Google Ventures, where he primarily focuses on early-stage investments. He has been deeply involved in the startup space since 2005, first as a web developer, then as a writer, and most recently as an investor and advisor. Having spent the past year in London helping to get Google Ventures’ European organization up and running, M.G. is now back in the Bay Area, working mainly out of Google Ventures’ San Francisco office. Before joining Google Ventures, M.G. was a founding partner of CrunchFund, an early-stage investment fund. Prior to that, he reported on the startup world as a writer for both TechCrunch and VentureBeat. M.G. still writes a column for TechCrunch on top of writing on his own sites and from time-to-time doing movie reviews in haiku. Originally from Ohio, M.G. graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor before moving out west to work in Hollywood. One day, he will write that killer screenplay.
StrictlyVC concludes its 2025 series with an exclusive event featuring insights from leading VCs and builders such as Pat Gelsinger, Mina Fahmi, and more. Plus, opportunities to forge meaningful connections.
Early Bird rate ends November 17.
Most Popular
-
Teradar raises 150ドルM for a sensor it says beats lidar and radar
Techcrunch eventJoin the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist
Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector.
Join the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist
Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector.
San Francisco | October 13-15, 2026