SeatQuest lets you search for event tickets online

SeatQuest lets you zoom in on available seats in your price range.

(Credit: SeatQuest)

Chicago-based start-up SeatQuest is offering a way to search online for seats for games, concerts, plays, and other performances.

The site offers up a search box for venue, event or ZIP code. The full public launch is set for November 27, which might explain why not all of the venues offered for San Francisco had tickets listed for sale and some venues were missing for the Bay Area. For instance, searching for musical group "Iron and Wine" shows venues in San Diego, Portland, and Dallas, but not Oakland, Calif., where they are playing at the Paramount later this month.

The interface is pretty straightforward. After you type in a request and select an option, it loads a map of the available seats for that venue. You can input the number of seats you want, and offer a maximum price you want to pay and it will mark the seats on the venue map that fit your criteria. Clicking on a seat displays information about the exact location and price in a pop-up window. It's fairly easy to navigate a magnifying glass over the seats and rows to see more specifically the location and arrangement of the seats.

You can click on a button to buy tickets from various ticket selling agencies.

The application also will be available in Facebook, where people can use it to see where friends are seated at shows.

[juicegarage]

I like what SeatQuest is trying to do. But when I used it I found it tough to actually find a venue where there was a map available and when I did the tickets they had were Ticketsnow. I may start using them once they have everything in order. I currently use the other ticket comparison places, mainly www.tickex.com, because it is quick and simple to use.

[chicagojim]

I like using seatquest, and though there are not maps to every venue, most of the major sporting events are covered (MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA) and a good number of theatres and concerts. The tickets are not all Ticketsnow tickets, there are also StubHub, and Ticketnetwork. They collect the tickets for sale from various sources to display on the maps, which are actually pretty cool. But there is a chance that they've updated since you were last there.

[bobferguson9999]

Another site operating much like Seatquest that just got off the ground is <a href="http://ticketsftw.com">TicketsFTW</a>. It operates on the same principle of aggregate pricing for event tickets much like a Priceline/Orbitz does for travel/hotel pricing. They also have interactive seating charts for most events as well as a Google maps inset and some photos of the actual venue in which the event is being held.