Twitter search gets a little more powerful

We missed this last week when ReadWriteWeb reported it , but maybe you did, too. So here's something we've just discovered.

A small but very handy change at Twitter 's search engine, search.twitter.com , means it now peeks inside the expanded versions of web addresses shortened using services like bit.ly and TinyURL .

The implications for you? Here are two:

• Searching using your site's domain as a keyword (e.g. "socialsignal.com") will now turn up tweets that linked to you but used a shortened URL. In the past, you had to rely on services like BackTweets or Ubervu to find shortened links to your site; otherwise, they'd be hidden behind a short, random series of characters.
• You'll now also find links that have keywords embedded in the address - which means it's now even more useful for content-management systems to generate SEO-friendly (and human-readable) URLs.

Handy, no?