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How to Use Google to Find Movie Showtimes, Find Theaters, and Reserve Your Tickets
Many internet users already know how to go to their movie theater’s website and see what movies they are currently showing and what the showtimes are. However, there is an easier way! Google has an index of pretty much every theater in the United States together with what movies they are currently showing and at what times.
One way to access this database is to type in the name of a movie that you want to see, then type in your location. For example, you can type in the name of the movie, and just the name of your city if you live in a large city. If your city is a little bit smaller, you may want to add a comma after the city name and type in the state.
You can also just type in the name of the movie and the ZIP code for your city. Google automatically finds theaters that are within a reasonable distance so that you can see the available alternatives.
Another method is to type in the name of the movie followed by your state. This only works for some of the smaller and less-populated states. As you can see below, it works for the smallest state by land area, Rhode Island.
Find All the Theaters Playing a Certain Movie
If you do a search for The Incredible Hulk, Seattle and then click on the name of the movie, you will be directed to a page similar to the one below:
From this screen, you can see all of the theaters that are playing The Incredible Hulk in the Seattle area.
How to Reserve Your Seat Without Standing In Line
You may notice that some of the showtimes are clickable (the ones that are blue and underlined). When you click on one of these links, it will transfer you to a website that allows you to purchase your movie tickets online.
This allows you to save your time by not having to go to the theater beforehand to get your tickets if you know the movie will be sold out.
Not Sure What Movie to See?
If all you know is that you want to spend approximately two hours of your time in a dark room full of strangers watching something on a screen, then simply type in movies [insert your city name, or ZIP code here]. You can see an example of this below.
For example, if I type in movies, traverse city, mi Google will show me a list of all of the movies that are playing in all of the theaters in Traverse City, MI.
You may notice that the title of the results, Showtimes for Traverse City, MI, is a clickable link. If you click on it, Google will show you all of the movies that are playing in Traverse City at any movie theater.
From this screen, Google makes it easy to hone in on any movie that sounds interesting. In the upper right hand corner, Google allows you to sort the listings by the following attributes:
- Theater Distance
- Movie Popularity
- Movie Rating
- Movie Title
Once you’ve done that, you can then click on the reviews to the left of the movie title to read what others think of the movie. Be careful though, they may contain spoilers that could potentially ruin the movie for you.
Google also tells you the running time of the movie, the rating, the genre, and allows you to view the movie trailer online. In addition, Google provides a link to the IMDb, which stands for the Internet Movie Database.
Getting to the Theater
After the title of the movie theater, Google displays the address. If you’re not sure where the address is located, Google provides a handy Map link that will allow you to view a map of where the theater is located. Optionally, you can enter your address and Google will give you driving directions.
Enjoy your movie!
Using Google Maps to Find Places Within Walking Distance
A new, interesting website harnesses the power of Google Maps to show you how close things are to a particular address.
If you’re on campus and want to find somewhere close by to grab a bite to eat, or if you’re simply thinking of renting an apartment in a certain area and want to make sure you can comfortably walk to the neighborhood supermarket, then WalkScore can help you out.
Below is a screen shot I took of a random address in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, PA. As you can see, WalkScore has assigned this particular address a score of 86 out of 100. The closer the score is to 100, the better the location is suited for using your legs to get you to the local amenities you need most.
If you want to find out what is within walking distance of any U.S. location, click here to go to www.walkscore.com.
With the gas prices at record levels, this site has come in handy for me. I can use it to find many business that I wouldn’t have known even existed otherwise.
Using Google as a Spell Checker
Believe it or not, I actually was the winner of the 4th grade spelling bee at my elementary school. Since then, I haven’t ever won any sort of spelling competition. That’s why Google comes in handy… a lot!
Let’s say you’re trying to write a letter by hand to somebody and you can’t remember how to spell a certain word. What do you do? Well, you could look it up in a dictionary, or start up Microsoft Word and type in the word and run spell check, or… You could use Google to spell check the word for you!
Let’s try one of the longest words in the English language: antidisestablishmentarianism. You can type something into the Google search bar that is remotely similar to the world you are trying to spell, and more often than not, Google will say, at the top of the search results:
Did you mean: [Proper spelling of word here]
Check out the screen shot below to see this in action.
Chances are you’ll never want to spell antidisestablishmentarianism. However, one of the 100 most misspelled words in the English Language is daiquiri. Now, let’s try to throw two words at Google that are spelled wrong: strawberry and daiquiri. Check out what happens:
Not only did Google correct the spelling of both my words, it actually knew that I was trying to spell daiquiri even when I didn’t include any of the three i’s in my misspelled version. Plus, I can take comfort in knowing that 42 people spelled strawberry and daiquiri wrong on their webpages at some point — even Carlos, a 22 year old male from The Loma, California. However, it looks like he had an excuse for misspelling it since he “sure did [have] too much strawbery daquary..heehee.”
If you aren’t amazed yet by the power that Google has in spell checking, look at the next screenshot where I type in the following phrase into a Google search box:
kan youu tel mee howw tu spel wurds?
Hopefully nobody would knowingly type this into Google, but if they did, Google would let them know in a very polite way that perhaps they had spelled all eight words they typed incorrectly. They could also rest assured knowing that Target.com is interested in selling to phonetically challenged people like themselves.
Drawbacks
Of course Google isn’t perfect. If a lot of people have misspelled certain words and they appear a lot on the internet, then Google may think that it is a proper way to spell that word and hence will not suggest another way to spell a misspelled word.
However, it appears that Google has changed their algorithm as the frequency of this occurring isn’t nearly as often as it was when this feature was first implemented. If you can find any occurrences of this, let me know in the comments section below.
Using Google to Check the Status of Your Flight
When you want to catch the plane, you really don’t want to take the time to call your airline or wade through a mass of pages just to see if your plane is on time. Google knows that, which is why they’ve made it simple to check the status of your flight through the search box.
All you have to do is type in the airline name followed by the flight number, and Google will tell you whether or not the flight is on time. They get this information through a flight tracking company known as FlightStats.
So, if you want to check the status of your domestic flight from Newark to Miami, just type in the airline and the flight number and you will see that your flight is all set to go at 9:45 AM in the morning.
Google can also check the status of flights outside of the 48 contiguous states. Yes, Alaska does have airplanes!
And if you’re heading to Paris, there’s no need to worry, Google also knows the status of major international flights as well.
Next time you want to check the status of your flight, know that it is as simple as typing in the airline name and the flight number into any Google search box!
Google Searching for Various Types of Files
Normally when you perform a Google search, you expect to see a list of webpages in your results. However, Google also has the amazing ability to search for various filetypes. Let’s suppose you want to learn more about global warming, and you want to see a nice slideshow about global warming without any ads. That’s easy enough to do! All you have to do is search by filetype. In this case you would want to search for Microsoft Powerpoint files, which are slideshows.
In order to perform a search for global warming and restrict your results to Microsoft Powerpoint files, you need to type the following into a Google search box:
filetype:ppt global warming
You will get search results similar to the ones below:
The filetype:ppt tells Google that you want to restrict your results to only files that have the extension of ppt, which would be Microsoft Powerpoint files. Then, all Google does is look for the two keywords global and warming in Powerpoint files.
Now you are free to open up the Powerpoint files. Be sure to scan them with a virus scanner just to be sure that they aren’t infected. Another alternative is to click on the View as HTML link right next to the search results. This will open them in your web browser, and is one way to view the files if you don’t have MIcrosoft PowerPoint installed on your computer.
Another way to view the files for free is to download the Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer, or the free and open productivity suite, OpenOffice.org.
Finding Useful Spreadsheets
Let’s say that you want to buy a home, and want to calculate how much home you can afford. One way to do this would be to make your own spreadsheet in MIcrosoft Excel. Another way to do it would be to search on Google and see if anyone has already made a similar spreadsheet that you can use. Let’s see what happens when you type the following into a Google search box:
filetype:xls home mortgage calculator
You end up with search results akin to these:
I browsed through the results and found one that looked like what I wanted, and after opening it and playing with it, you can see that it turned out to be fairly useful:
Worksheet Courtesy of stephenlnelson.com
Finding a Tax Form
Let’s say that you’ve procrastinated your tax return and want to find the 2007 1040EZ tax form. All you have to do is search for the following in the Google search box:
filetype:pdf 1040EZ
Just like magic, the first search result is exactly what you were looking for! In cases like these, just make sure that the file comes from the proper source. In this case www.irs.gove would be a reputable source from which to obtain this form.
Other Filetypes
What other filetypes can Google search? Google currently searches the following thirteen basic filetypes:
- Adobe Portable Document Format (pdf)
- Adobe PostScript (ps)
- Lotus 1-2-3 (wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku)
- Lotus WordPro (lwp)
- MacWrite (mw)
- Microsoft Excel (xls)
- Microsoft PowerPoint (ppt)
- Microsoft Word (doc)
- Microsoft Works (wks, wps, wdb)
- Microsoft Write (wri)
- Rich Text Format (rtf)
- Shockwave Flash (swf)
- Text (ans, txt)
However, this list could grow as more filetypes become common. Google says the following about this:
Google is always looking to expand the range of content it searches, so expect to see other file types added to the service over time as Google discovers them on the Web.
If you have any questions or comments about searching by filetype, just post them below!