Simple Search for Movie Times & Theaters
Simple commands in Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask, will return all you need for your movie viewing pleasure.
Does this scenario sound familiar?
You want to go see a movie. You pick a movie. You do a search on what theaters are in your area. You see if any of them are playing the movie you want to see. You view the show times, pick one, and either purchase tickets online, or search map directions and purchase at the door.
As with many other tasks, proper power search techniques makes this laundry list of steps a thing of the past. So how do we use the Search Engines to show us this wonderful movie information?
Search Movies in Google
Entering the search term movies into Google, will give you this little gem:
Now check this out – if you are not sure of the full title of a movie, but have a detail & need more info., use the special search term movie: special detail and you will pull up immediate reviews, ratings and links to movies with your special detail in the title.
Search Movies in Yahoo
Of course, searching Yahoo has similar commands. Want to see a movie preview or trailer? Just enter the movie tile and the word trailer or trailers, and voila! You’ve got trailers and a search box to list your local times, like this:
An alternative, is to simply search the title of the movie and your city, state, to see listings and times.
Search Movies in Ask
In my opinion, Ask’s Search Engine kicks the rest to shame in this category… Just simply enter in the title of the movie you are searching and hit Enter. Then you get all of the above, and much more, in a rockin format. No joke! Try this: Search for Indiana Jones on Ask.
Or maybe you want to see a movie, but need some suggestions…Just search for movies and it brings up very handy options, to say the least.
Search Movies in MSN / Live
And yes, Microsoft does their thing as well. Although not quite as cool as Ask, they do make an assumption – just search for the title of the movie, and your first listing will be show times in your area. You can go move on from there, and although I think the the assumption of If I search for “Indiana Jones”, I want to see the movie and would be most interested in knowing local show times, it is still an assumption…And we know what they say about those, don’t we?
Quick Alternative
Keep in mind, that most of these Search Engines also have directories, and sub-sites, dedicated to various things, for example, movies. Only Yahoo! is the easiest to locate this area: you can get there from their main page, or just go to http://movies.yahoo.com. MSN also has a http://movies.msn.com. But doing the movies.SearchEngineName.com does not work for Google nor Ask.
So we have pros and cons for each Search Engine, but overall, I think these commands will not only help your movie search, but also give you a bit more depth of understanding Search Engines.
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Love the design of your site. Did you do it yourself?
on August 13th, 2009 at 11:12 amThank you
Yes, I did.
on August 14th, 2009 at 1:29 pmThanks for this, should make it easier to find out what’s showing at the cinema
on December 2nd, 2009 at 4:13 am