Google Information fails with special characters from EventBrite

[Jon]

We love the plugin but are having an issue where if the event imported from EventBrite has a special character in it, or the organizer or any other info imported from EventBrite puts in all these weird special characters that cause issues with the google search results, and other parts of our site as well. Here is an example of what we are seeing:

<script type="application/ld+json">[{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Event","name":"Built To Spill @ Slim\u2019s <br> w/ The Hand, Iceberg Ferg","description":"<p>\u00a0Door 7pm / Show 8pm Twenty years on from first signing to Warner Bros. Records, Built To Spill returned in 2015 with its eighth studio album, Untethered Moon. That\u2019s now two complete decades that one of America\u2019s leading \u201cindie rock\u201d bands has happily made its home on a major label, and in the process redefined [&hellip;]</p>\\n","image":"http://www.slimspresents.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/BLANK.jpg","url":"http://www.slimspresents.com/event/built-to-spill-slims-4/","startDate":"2016-02-10T03:00:00+00:00","endDate":"2016-02-10T07:59:00+00:00","location":{"@type":"Place","name":"Slim’s","address":"333 11th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103"}}]</script>

Notice all the \u00a0 and \u2019 and \u201d things in there? it’s messed up! Please help.

Jessie

[Nico]

Hi Jessie,

Thanks for reaching out to us on this! I’ll try to help you find a workaround until this is fixed.

Can you please point me to the URL where I can see this issue? Also please send along the EventBrite event URL so I can try to reproduce/fix this on my end.

Best,
Nico

[Jon]

It’s on almost ALL of our pages because we use the word Slim’s for almost everything, but you can see it happening here (if you view the page source).
http://www.slimspresents.com/event/hibbity-dibbity-slims-w-down-outlaws-loco-tranquilo/

Here it is on eventbrite
http://www.eventbrite.com/e/hibbity-dibbitys-cosmic-rodeo-slims-w-down-outlaws-loco-tranquilo-tickets-20130900064?ref=ebtn

[Nico]

Hey Jessie,

Thanks for sending that over! I could reproduce with an event created locally so I don’t think this is related to the fact that event has been imported from EventBrite.

I see the title get’s passed by the WordPress function esc_js, maybe that’s generating the encoding glitch. Is this showing up incorrectly on Google? If so can you send me a screenshoot? It will be helpful if a bug ticket comes up from this.

Thanks,
Nico

[Jon]

Hey Nico,
thanks for getting back to me. It looks like the biggest issue is actually that my client has been entering <br> tags into the titles of the events in EventBrite because eventbrite is pretty limited in terms of headliners vs. supporting acts so they have been doing that as a workaround. You can see an example here:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=built+to+spill+%40+slim%E2%80%99s+%3Cbr%3E+w/+the+hand,+iceberg+ferg,+february+10&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAOPgEOLSz9U3ME2uNEorV-LVT9c3NEzOrjTPMM-t0lLNTrbSz8lPTizJzM-DM6xKC5LzczPz0hVSy1LzSoqTBCyMjQyTEpNNjAyMTAyS0kweMTYxcgu8_HFPWKpy0pqT1xiLuYgzSsiLi801rySzpFJIjotPCslpGgxSPFxIfCkFJS7ereXNYqL5FpzbtYQ4DU0FdNXq-hsEv3CrKBzZpdjMAwDBlXc63AAAAA

Lots of the titles have <br> in them. Do you think it is possible for the schema to just strip those out??

[Nico]

Jessie,

Thanks for following up! So I guess this narrow down to the <br> tags then. All other seems to be correctly displayed.

To remove the <br> tags from the json+ld data, add this nisppet to your theme (or child theme) functions.php file:

https://gist.github.com/niconerd/02386b3e0bd9a130ef06

Please let me know if it works for you,
Best,
Nico

[Support Droid]

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