Update your canceled, postponed, or virtual events in Search for google

168790

Update your canceled, postponed, or virtual events in Search for google

We got this notice today and wanted to get your input on the best way to approach this.

Any advice will help and is much appreciated at this time.

Update your canceled, postponed, or virtual events in Search

In the current environment and status of COVID-19 around the world, many events are being canceled, postponed, or moved to virtual formats. Google wants to show users the latest, most accurate information about your events in this fast-changing environment, and so we’ve added some new, optional properties to our developer documentation to help. These properties apply to all regions and languages. This is one part of our overall efforts in schema updates needed to support publishers and users. Here are some important tips on keeping Google and users up to date on your events:

Add the eventStatus property: Use this property to tell Google that the event has been canceled, postponed, rescheduled, or happening as planned. Learn more.
If your event is virtual, specify VirtualLocation for the event location and OnlineEventAttendanceMode for the eventAttendanceMode property.
Update Google when your event pages change: Provide a sitemap to Google, and keep the lastmod attributes up to date. If your site host generates your sitemap automatically, it’s taken care of for you.
We understand this is a very difficult and complex time for everyone. We hope you’ll help us update your events so that we can continue to be helpful and show the most up-to-date information for users. We’ve included resources below to help you get started.

Best regards,
The Google Search team

BY: Josh Lee - Mar 19,2020 AT 2:12PM - 5 years ago

- Artem Mar 20,2020 AT 3:03AM - Posted 5 years ago - #168855
  Hello,
  
  Thank you for your messages, I am going to assign this ticket to Ashan. Please allow some time for him to get back to you, we greatly appreciate your patience and thank you for being a eventon customer!
- Ashan Perera Mar 20,2020 AT 3:17PM - Posted 5 years ago - #168926
  We got you covered mate 🙂 the cancel event option in the event publish is already built to populate the information for google structured data.
  
  on front end
  
  just make sure you have NOT set to remove schema data for the calendar in settings.
  
  And lastly stay safe out there josh!
- Martin Tantow Mar 21,2020 AT 5:35PM - Posted 5 years ago - #168990
  Hi Ashan,
  
  I understand the option to show an event as canceled, however, Google gives me a warning about two fields:
  
  –> Invalid enum value in field “eventStatus”
  
  –> Missing field “eventAttendanceMode”
  
  I’m getting these warnings also for events that are not canceled and have not moved to a virtual location.
  
  What shall I do about these warnings?
  
  Thanks,
  Martin
  BestFamilyEscapes.com
- Josh Lee Mar 22,2020 AT 2:44PM - Posted 5 years ago - #169060
  I got the same notice as well
- Lingo24 Lingo24 Mar 23,2020 AT 1:11PM - Posted 5 years ago - #169148
  Yes, we also need EventPostponed, EventRescheduled or EventMovedOnline for the eventStatus property. Canceled is not enough. Thank you!
- Artem Mar 23,2020 AT 2:45PM - Posted 5 years ago - #169170
  Hi,
  
  I guess you guys speak about:
  https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/03/new-properties-virtual-or-canceled-events.html
  
  I am putting the link here and Ashan will review to update with those values, so it is COVID related.
- Ashan Perera Mar 23,2020 AT 4:20PM - Posted 5 years ago - #169181
  thank you guys very much for reporting this. I am working on implementing this change in a more intergrated way into eventON given the recent development in COVID situation and lot of events having to cancel or postpone. Hoping to get this new update with improved cancel events features into eventON within in next few days 🙂
- Lingo24 Lingo24 Mar 24,2020 AT 12:23AM - Posted 5 years ago - #169198
  Hi and thank you! I opened yesterday a similar ticket explaining that it’s needed in the context of the novel coronavirus outspread, but moved here since it;s the same topic and you guys already answered this thread. Again thank you, looking forward to your updates!
  
  Best,
  Oana
- Artem Mar 24,2020 AT 3:22PM - Posted 5 years ago - #169330
  You are welcome Oana,
  
  We do work hard to get all things done the soonest, so we appreciate the patience!
- Ashan Perera Mar 24,2020 AT 3:35PM - Posted 5 years ago - #169339
  just released the new version 2.8.7 which adds the new event status feature to support event cancellations.
- Ashan Perera Mar 24,2020 AT 3:57PM - Posted 5 years ago - #169349
  here is the notes from the new version https://www.myeventon.com/news/eventon-2-8-7-new-event-statuses/
- Josh Lee Mar 26,2020 AT 10:24AM - Posted 5 years ago - #169640
  Unfortunately am still getting errors for : Invalid enum value in field “eventAttendanceMode”
  
  Wondering if people are getting the same issue…
- Ashan Perera Mar 26,2020 AT 2:32PM - Posted 5 years ago - #169675
  Josh what is the link to your event where you are getting this error?
- Josh Lee Mar 26,2020 AT 2:50PM - Posted 5 years ago - #169677
  Here is 1 of the 117 affected events I have.
  
  https://texaswinetrail.com/events/food-wine-experience/
- Artem Mar 26,2020 AT 3:51PM - Posted 5 years ago - #169716
  Hi,
  
  Thank you for letting us know and for the update.
  
  Ashan will chek for this if iti s a bug.
- Andy Gladstein Mar 26,2020 AT 5:45PM - Posted 5 years ago - #169729
  Getting the same error, here are the specifics that google is reporting (our event is listed as scheduled)
- Ashan Perera Mar 27,2020 AT 10:24AM - Posted 5 years ago - #169857
  hello josh so I ran your site via google structured data test and it seems everything is correct so far .
  
  Here is the link to google structured data testing – https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool
- Josh Lee Mar 27,2020 AT 3:00PM - Posted 5 years ago - #169930
  Lastly, I am trying to change event from “cancelled” to “postponed” I made the switch and saved but it still shows on the event as cancelled….
  
  https://texaswinetrail.com/events/sipping-on-the-edge-wine-festival/
- Thomas Dubbis Mar 30,2020 AT 10:12AM - Posted 5 years ago - #170272
  Same hier – Switch to “postponed” – and the Events are also shown as “cancelled”.
- Thomas Dubbis Mar 30,2020 AT 10:22AM - Posted 5 years ago - #170276
  canceled can not be undone or i don’t found it.
- Artem Mar 30,2020 AT 11:10AM - Posted 5 years ago - #170290
  Hi Thomas,
  
  Please create different tickets for any other requests so we can be able to handle them.
  
  Do not put everything in one ticket, it is really confusing for us.
  
  We appreciate your patience.
- Ashan Perera Mar 30,2020 AT 2:58PM - Posted 5 years ago - #170338
  
  Sorry about that guys seems the backward compatibility was not working correct kindly apply this patch fix and will do the job 🙂
- Josh Lee Mar 30,2020 AT 3:07PM - Posted 5 years ago - #170342
  Thanks for the quick response. To be clear am I adding this code to that file?
- Josh Lee Mar 30,2020 AT 3:42PM - Posted 5 years ago - #170348
  disregard previous comment I added code from visual.
- Josh Lee Mar 30,2020 AT 3:44PM - Posted 5 years ago - #170351
  Unfortunately I am getting errors still…
  
  code I added:
  
  // array of post meta fields that should be deleted from event post meta
  foreach(array(
  ‘evo_location_tax_id’,’evo_organizer_tax_id’, ‘_cancel’
  ) as $ff){
  delete_post_meta($post_id, $ff);
  }
  
  errors are attached still…
- Ashan Perera Mar 30,2020 AT 4:10PM - Posted 5 years ago - #170361
  Josh your event has correct schema data my friend. Please check the screenshot i sent above from data testing tool from google. The error you are seeing might be from cached version of your website. You may have to allow sometime for google to recrawl and index the site with new data. Check this site https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/03/new-properties-virtual-or-canceled-events.html the bottom of the page talks about how you can create sitemap to encourage google to index again.
- Josh Lee Mar 30,2020 AT 4:11PM - Posted 5 years ago - #170363
  Thank you I will take a look.
- Artem Mar 31,2020 AT 12:05PM - Posted 5 years ago - #170500
  Hi Josh,
  
  You are welcome. If there is anything else required, please do create a new ticket for us.
  
  We appreciate everything.