You are sending in empty query terms, if you stop doing that, it will stop reporting that error. for example, if you find on = and replace with =x on your query, you get "Sorry, your query cannot be more than 140 characters long (it is 168 characters).".
I do not think you should be testing against the web search when the intention is to use the API, they are not in perfect parity, and the error messages do not seem to be perfectly accurate.
You get 140 url encoded characters to the search API, at least, that is what my previous test showed. Anything outside of 140, would be unpredictable, and not to be relied on.
-- Scott * If you contact me off list replace talklists@ with scott@ * On Oct 17, 2009, at 9:24 PM, leonspencer wrote:
Continuing to go it along with the Advanced Search Tool to see what defines the "query" and length of 140 chars. Latest try resulted in the following response from the tool: "You must enter a query. " This is the query I entered from using the advanced search tool: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=&ands=12345678901234567890&phrase=12345678901234567890&ors=12345678901234567890¬s=12345678901234567890&tag=12345678901234567890&lang=en&from=&to=&ref=&near=&within=15&units=mi&since=&until=&rpp=15 I used order groups of 20 digits to examine the length - 12345678901234567890.
