Google Events Update

One of the few remaining frustrations when searching, except not finding any results to your search terms, is that you still have to view the content of a webpage before deciding if it is not relevant. Mostly you can tell by the text snippet that has existed in all search engines for some time now but it is rare that this can give you the most pertinent information.

Google have now rolled out rich snippets that not only look at the standard page information but also establishes if the site contains events that that may be pertinent to the search term entered. This technology is available thanks in part to the new realtime updates from indexed sites. The display of events is a strong increase in pertinent data over the previously available address info and customer reviews.

The new system is able to display not only the usual website details and preview text but also the details of any events listed on that site. Details that can be displayed include the event name, time and date and Location plus a link to and photo of the upcoming event. This kind of direct information really is going to make an impact to the time users stay on Google’s search pages as with this kind of information freely available on those pages there is less need to navigate to possible relevant sites.

For SEO this may also mean a dramatic standardisation of how events are included into websites, to ensure that Google can find and show the information accurately. It will also be interesting to see how website traffic changes in response to what will ultimately be a standardised presentation of event information. It is possible that smaller, independent events may increase in traffic if they are presented on a level playing field with the mainstream events.