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August 31, 2005
Google Brings Film Showtimes and Reviews Service to the UK
Google has just introduced their film showtime and review service on the Google UK site. It operates just like the U.S. film info service that went live in February.
Searchers can trigger the Google Film service on Google.co.uk, by entering the terms:
- Films or
- Showtimes or
- The title of a current film A box will appear at the top of the results page where you can enter a city name or Postal Code.
Results pages contain showtimes and a link to find reviews from various sources. Pages are designed to the searcher to quickly identify positive and negative reviews, to search "within" the reviews, and more. Google Films also shows an "average rating" that's based on all of the reviews in their database.
Film showtimes along with basic info (running times, rating, etc.) is also now available via SMS in the UK. Details and directions here.
If you're looking for info about older films, enter, film: [title] or movie:[title] into a web search box to trigger the service.
The only thing that surprised me was after spot checking reviews for several popular films, I wasn't able to find many reviews published in the UK media. I would think that this content would also be relevant to Google UK users.
Others
- Ask Jeeves UK provides a "Smart Search" box at the top of web results pages with direct links to find reviews and showtimes at MyMovies.net.
- Yahoo UK and MSN don't provide movie showtime/info shortcuts but both do offer comprehensive film info sites.
Posted by Gary Price on August 31, 2005 12:43 PM
