Wondering if a movie will be box office boffo or a bomb?

Forget the critics, Google says it’s all in the keystrokes.

A new study just released by the company says — based through activity on its search engine — it can predict a film’s opening week success with 94 per cent accuracy.

Called “Quantifying Movie Magic with Google Search” the white-paper states that “movie trailer” searches four weeks from a film’s release “provides strong predictive power” for a film’s kickoff.

And even though accuracy drops as the release date approaches, searching a film’s title (as opposed to its trailer) as well as a theatre’s availability and season, still gives a 92 per cent accuracy rate just one week before a film’s debut.

Considering that 48 per cent of people make the final decision on what film to see the day they go, Google is pleased with it’s methodology.

The report says search volume alone cannot account for the entire story and that search ad click volume is also a key element of the prediction model as it signifies “deeper engagement” with a particular film.

“In the seven day window prior to a film’s release date, if one film has 250,000 more search queries than a similar film, the film with more queries is likely to perform up to $4.3 million better during opening weekend,” states the report. “When looking at the search ad click volume, if a film has 20,000 more paid clicks than a similar film, it is expected to bring in up to $7.5 million more during opening weekend.”

Google says people are starting to look more closely at online information before going out and putting down big bucks on a movie night.

On average, moviegoers consult about 13 sources before making a decision and although the number of titles released declined nine per cent in 2012 over 2011, movie searches on Google are up 56 per cent through the same period.

But a spokesperson for Google said there are no plans to share the information with the ticket buying public now or in the future and that it will be developed into a digital marketing tool.

So called pre-release “tracking” has been around for decades with movie industry insiders saying it’s usually “the movie that has the most screens that weekend” that wins.

It’s still an unpredictable science but Google says they’ve dialed it up a bit.

Jennifer Price, Google’s head of industry, media and entertainment told the Telegraph that their search data suggested the 2012 Channing Tatum film Magic Mike would take $40 million during its opening weekend, considerably higher than the $15-20 million predicated by its studio, Warner Bros. — and it ended up taking $39 million.

Conversely, producers believed Rihanna’s 2012 frizzler Battleship would get $40 million opening weekend. When the smoke cleared it only achieved $25.5 million — closer to Google’s prediction of under $30 million.

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The report concludes that online engagement — through search — is opening more doors to interact with moviegoers in real time.

“This presents an opportunity for an ongoing conversation with potential moviegoers, and more importantly for movie marketers,” it states. “It presents a unique opportunity to guide the conversation through search marketing.”

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