What times are that movie you want to see being shown at the local cinema? Finding out constitutes one of the more common of Web searches and one I’ve always conducted using Google.
But maybe I should be using Bing, at least according to a quick side-by-side survey undertaken by Search Engine Land. Both Bing and Google strive to provide local movie times within the first result returned on a title search, as the screen shot above shows for “Deliver Us From Evil” on Bing. Search Engine Land found:
After performing movie title searches for last weekend’s top box office hits on both search engines, we discovered Bing returned movie showtimes for 100 percent of the searches, while Google was successful only 70 percent of the time.
Not only did Google fail to find showtimes for the film “America,” but it also missed the boat on “Jersey Boys” and “Deliver Us From Evil.” Also, to find showtimes on Google for the latest Transformers movie, the movie’s full title – “Transformers: Age of Extinction” – was required.
Meanwhile, Bing found showtimes for all of the top ten box office hits from last weekend, and “America” without having to search it – or Transformer’s – full title.
I tried Google for its reported misses and was returned the same timeless results.
Of course, another click or two on Google will find you those movie times, so a big deal this is not. And claims of Bing being better – especially claims by Microsoft – have proven unfounded in the past.
Nevertheless, if you’re in a hurry …
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