Twitter API Search has the limitations such as<\/p>\n
You may not be able to retrieve tweets from very old dates. It may return only 1500 or from 7 days which one is earlier.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It may return only around 20 per request. You can set rpp to get more<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You may not be allowed to query within 30 secs.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There are some services such as Topsy, SnapBird : I saw claims that they can provide you tweets from earlier dates. However, it probably is pretty difficult to get the specific tweets that you are searching for, unless they have stored all tweets themselves. They might have special agreement with twitter to access the data [I do not know].<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Twitter probably could have a paid service for that.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Or you can write some code to store all tweets or for any particular type tweets. and store them for a long time. who knows, your data may become valuable once in the future. You take it from here, for all the new such twitter like services comes around, you can collect and store data, you can create search services based on the data. Who knows the stuff can become valuable once in the future.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If you are making an application based on tweets, and if you need to keep upto date with tweets, you may use only search API, or both Search and Streaming API. Search can collect the past 7 days. but Streaming can collect the live stream. You can still use the search as a cron job and collect tweets as you go. However, streaming api may give you more tweets. And Yes, definitely, you can use the third party services to collect very old tweets. I have given a list below:<\/p>\n
You can check on it at:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/140dev.com\/twitter-api-programming-tutorials\/aggregating-tweets-search-api-vs-streaming-api\/<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
List of Twitter Search Services:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/snapbird.org\/<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.sysomos.com\/social-media-monitoring\/<\/p>\n
https:\/\/github.com\/sferik\/t<\/p>\n
http:\/\/knightlab.northwestern.edu\/2013\/09\/16\/twxplorer-find-meaning-in-the-global-conversation\/<\/p>\n
http:\/\/php.dzone.com\/articles\/twitter-search-api-using-php<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Search engines such as Google can be searched for Twitter Tweets<\/p>\n