Contributor tips - Advanced title search

Hi all!

Welcome to another instalment of the contributor tips series. These posts to let you know about handy contributor tips that you may not otherwise have been aware of, which can help you out when submitting to IMDb.

Following on from our first post about magic URLs, today I’m focusing on using advanced title search to return helpful search results based on your areas of interest when looking for data gaps to contribute to on the Desktop site. Say for example you are from the UK with access to Disney+ and want to submit certificates, here is a custom search result that will give you a list of movie and TV series titles that have Disney+ as an associated company but no certificate for the UK:

https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=feature,tv_series&companies=co0721120&certificates=!GB%3aU&certificates=!GB%3aPG&certificates=!GB%3a12A&certificates=!GB%3a12&certificates=!GB%3a15&certificates=!GB%3a18&certificates=!GB%3aAll&certificates=!GB%3aG&certificates=!GB%3a0%2B&certificates=!GB%3a6%2B&certificates=!GB%3a7%2B&certificates=!GB%3a9%2B&certificates=!GB%3a12%2B&certificates=!GB%3a13%2B&certificates=!GB%3aTeen&certificates=!GB%3a14%2B&certificates=!GB%3a16

Here is another that will return you a list of movie and TV series without any awards information sorted by your ratings:

https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=feature,tv_series&!has=awards&sort=my_ratings,desc

Here is one more that returns a list of videogames missing a plot:

https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=video_game&!has=plot

And another for TV Specials missing a goof sorted by your ratings:

https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=tv_special&!has=goofs&sort=my_ratings,desc

And a final one for movies with Hulu as an associated company and no soundtrack information sorted by your ratings:

https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=feature&!has=soundtracks&companies=co0218858&sort=my_ratings,desc

The key is to build a search using the existing options in the advanced title search, then make edits to the URL to include the “!“ before the ”has“ for the associated sections where you want to return no results.

So to filter to a specific company, make the advanced search that you want including one of the pre-set existing company options and hit search:



Then in a separate window find the right company page on IMDb and copy the company name from the URL:

Go back to your search results URL:

https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=video&has=locations&companies=universal&sort=my_ratings,desc

and make the following edits:

and hit enter to return a list of videos with Hulu as an associated company without any location information on IMDb.

I hope this helps. If you've got any other top tips for using the advanced search when contributing please comment below to help out other contributors. Also let me know if you find these tips useful and whether you’d like us to continue posting them.

Thanks,
Will