Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Getting Info to Google, Yahoo, MSN, Fandango, and so on

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Posted by Alex Shultz (Member # 5027) on 03-02-2010, 01:26 AM:

I noticed that my theatre's movie times weren't reliably getting on to all those nice movie search sites (Google, Flixster, etc.). I asked a couple of the sites to update the info and they said I have to talk to West World Media about it.

What do you do to make sure your current movies are accurately listed on sites like that? Do you pay WWM to let you use their web site to do it?

Posted by Mike Frese (Member # 4361) on 03-02-2010, 12:09 PM:

we email to these:

schedules@cinema-source.com

times@nowshowing.com

Usually 90% correct.

Posted by Celine Negrete (Member # 5531) on 04-11-2010, 06:06 PM:

Ok, might seem like a silly question...but what information and in what format do you send this info to cinema-source?

I have a single screen with only one showing a night.

Do I simply send them the name of theatre, address, phone, name of film showing, day and time for each day of the week? What about ticket prices information?

Is this information simply typed into an email and sent to them? Does it need to be attached as a file?? I have no clear understanding of how to get the information to them.

Is there a deadline for when to get the information to them for Friday's openings?

Are information used to be correct, but I just recently noticed (at Yahoo Movies) they we are listed as "no information available".

BTW, I just took over the job (managing the theatre) and this part of the job was never explained to me....hence my complete lack of understanding on this topic!

Posted by Mike Frese (Member # 4361) on 04-11-2010, 06:22 PM:

We just copy our newspaper ad to these folks. I would imagine an email with your theater name, address, phone number and movie info. would be sufficient.

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 04-11-2010, 06:56 PM:

We've been using cinema source for several years now, but as of late (past year) they have consistently gotten our show times incorrect even after calling and re-faxing the schedules multiple times. Heck, they've even listed movies that we don't and never had showing. As a result customers have the wrong information and of course complain. So now we have a notice posted that we do not guarantee the accuracy of any show time information posted on any website.

Posted by Ronda Fitzsimmons (Member # 1418) on 04-11-2010, 07:05 PM:

It also matters if your theatre is already listed. If you are, and you need corrections made to pricing, phone numbers, etc... then put that info first with a very nicely worded request. After about the 10th request some of the listings will be corrected (grins).

Just send the schedule info in an e-mail, with the theatre name and city/st in the subject line, and contact info below your schedule with a request to call or email with questions will usually get your times posted every week. We send ours whenever our schedule is confirmed. Usually Monday afternoon or Tuesday on short weeks. Occasionally we will send them out on Weds if there's a mistake or a late addition.

We looked at WWM's website program, but it wasn't cost effective for us. We do use their weekly email though. It's a reasonably priced way to reach our regular customers without driving someone nuts trying to keep up with all the changes to the list every week. Now we just send them an email every week, with our excel file attached, just like times@nowshowing.com and schedules@cinema-source.com.

For about a $200/yr we use Networksolutions website creator to host our site, and they have the site creator built into their hosting system. We then just copy/paste our manual MS Excel created schedule into the basic template and update what movies are playing with pics and a short description.

Good Luck!

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 04-12-2010, 11:46 AM:

Since we buy our showtimes data from CinemaSource to publish on The BigScreen Cinema Guide, I can tell you what has worked in our experience.

Go to our Submission Information page:

http://www.bigscreen.com/extranet/submitschedule.php

That contains the contact information for CinemaSource where you can send them your showtimes via E-Mail, fax, or phone.

No matter how you submit it to them, they're going to need the essential items of information. Your theater's name and other identification (so that they can accurately distinguish you from the thousands of other theaters they are processing information for), and a clear list of the dates, movies, and showtimes.

We have a PDF form that you can use if you are faxing, or to use as a worksheet to see what pieces of information to provide by E-Mail/phone. I recommend sending an E-Mail, since you can be very clear with the information you are providing, and not worry about the quality problems that can come from faxing. If you are going to use a fax machine, make sure that you use large and legible print that will survive the shredding that fax transmissions create. I've seen just horrible submissions in the past (back when we used to get the faxes directly from theaters), and it makes the job of the data entry person much harder and increases the chances for errors to occur.

Also, I have direct contacts at CinemaSource, so I can resolve issues that arise with showtimes. It's in our best interest to have accurate information, and for the money we pay for showtimes, I expect that issues be fixed promptly and they have always been good about resolving issues that do come up. Such issues are inevitable when you are talking about hundreds of thousands of showtimes, but it's important to get them resolved and to try to keep them from happening in the future.

I'll be happy to help in any way that I can!

By the way, here is the Magic Theatre's entry on our site:

http://www.bigscreen.com/Marquee.php?theater=7989

We don't have showtimes for you for today, but that matches what I'm seeing on your site. The times are off by 5 minutes though, so I'm putting in an E-Mail to CinemaSource now about that.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 04-12-2010, 01:03 PM:

With Cinema Source, I actually generate a comma-delimited text file which they use to update their times. We've been doing this for all three of our locations for 5-6 years and we have virtually no issues with incorrect times.

nowshowing.com has been a little more problematic because they manually enter times from the schedule we send.

I have also put a lot of effort in to ensuring as many of our customers as possible are getting our show times from our web site rather than Yahoo, Google, Fandang, etc. I don't include times in show times emails or Facebook posts. All of this cuts down the margin of error to almost zero.

Posted by Celine Negrete (Member # 5531) on 04-13-2010, 03:48 PM:

Thanks for the replies and information. And, thanks Scott for the extra info.

I am working on it today. Hopefully all will be solved soon!

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 04-13-2010, 04:04 PM:

Celine: Does the Magic Theatre still have a bunch of couches for seating? I grew up in Grass Valley and Nevada City. I remember watching "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Oliver and Company" at the Magic.

Posted by Celine Negrete (Member # 5531) on 04-13-2010, 05:21 PM:

Hey Justin! That is cool to hear!!

Actually, the couches and bean bags went away about 10 years ago when the theatre changed hands. I know folks still talk about it fondly...but, newer (and cleaner!) seats really were needed.

You can see a couple of picture on our FB fan page:
Magic Theare FB fan page

We are actually doing a major upgrade to the equipment and seats at the end of the month. And, I know some folks will 'complain' about the changes this time too.

But, I believe, it is for the best!

If you are ever in town again, let me know. Be happy to have you as a guest of the theatre!

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 04-14-2010, 10:39 AM:

I've never sent our showtimes to anybody but they still get picked up by various sites. I've also never done anything to promote our site on the search engines but it still comes up on top of the list for Google and Bing if you search "roxy, forsyth" or "movies, forsyth mt" or "theatre (or theater), forsyth mt." I suppose just the fact that the site has been at the same address and host for about 10 years has something to do with it.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 04-14-2010, 04:19 PM:

Actually Mike, the various search engines send out spiders or bots which crawl the Internet indexing content. Even if you went to a new address and host, the site would wind up at the top of searches within a few months.

They also keep track of how often someone clicks your link when using a search term like you mentioned.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 04-14-2010, 06:57 PM:

Right, so why do people pay extra to web developers to get their sites listed on Google and such?

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 04-14-2010, 10:02 PM:

Because they want to guarantee that they get one of the top spots or get put into google's "sponsored links." Although with the latter they could just pay google directly.