Structured Data on Event Search Results

[Saif]

This was brought up a few months ago and stated:
“I’m happy to report that we have been working on this feature for our upcoming 4.2 release.”

I’m running 4.3.6(? or the current one) of Pro / and everything other than tickets. I don’t have structured data for my events on the event page or the front page.

Help.

[Geoff]

Hi Saif,

Would you be willing to share to share your system information with me? You can find it in Events > Settings > Help at the bottom of the screen. Copy the information and paste it here for me as a private reply.

The reason I ask for it is because the latest version of The Events Calendar is 4.2.4 and I want to make sure that is consistent with the 4.3.6 version you mentioned above.

Also, please bear in mind that structured data can take different forms in search results. For example, here is a screenshot example of the structured data from our demo site when it appears in Google’s search results. Also, it’s worth noting that whether or not structured data displays in search results depends on the search engine’s ability to index that information–which could be blocked by other factors, such as theme conflicts.

Let’s start here and see what we find. 🙂

Thanks,
Geoff

[Saif]

This reply is private.

[Saif]

Private post made – our entire 10 year purpose has been to make event information easily accessible, so you can see my concern about making sure we get this part right 🙂 Thank you for your help.

[Geoff]

Hey Saif, hope you had a great weekend!

I tried running your site through Google’s structured data testing tool and it does not appear that structured data for events is properly being read.

To see the difference, try adding the URL of our demo site to the tool, which is also running the latest plugins:

https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/#url=wpshindig.com%2F

Trying to figure out why the structured data in your site is going unseen could be pretty tricky. Normally I would ask that you try testing for conflicts, but that may not reveal what’s happening until Google updates it’s information about your site on its servers.

But let’s try it anyway as a first course of action. If you could follow the steps outlined here and try running your site through the testing tool, that would be super helpful and at least get us started.

If that doesn’t yield any results, then we’ll have to do a deeper form of troubleshooting — but let’s see what we get first before going that route. 🙂

Thanks!
Geoff

[Saif]

So, I went through the steps, no change.
I even tried installing every event widget you have on my front page – nothin’.
—

The /events section works fine – but your widgets aren’t pulling in any data / displaying the JSON code to do it in the first place?

How do I get the same level of structured data that your events calendar pages have – on every page I put a event calendar widget? Or, at the very least, my home page so I can get that precious event data indexed.

[Geoff]

Hi Saif,

Thanks so much for following up! I’m glad that the structured data for /events is working out fine — that’s exactly what I was hoping. 🙂

Unfortunately, we removed the structured data from the widget in version 4.0 due to reports about it showing up on everyones Google search results.

That being said, you can totally add it back if you want to. In fact, my colleague Brook has posted a workaround for that in this thread.

Cheers,
Geoff

[Saif]

Added the code, no change.

As proof I did ad / edit – I even left “//”‘s in front of the links on the side bar.

What code can I add to the widgets to get the structured data on my front page, etc.

[Geoff]

Hey Saif,

Sorry for the delayed reply. I’ve been digging into this with some other folks on our team to see what’s happening. Turns out that since we removed structured data in widgets in a past release, it would take quite a bit more custom development to add it back in. I’m sorry for the bad news, but I hope this at least helps answer your question.

Thanks,
Geoff

[Saif]

Okay, is there anything detailing said customization?

Could there at least be a work around to cover it for JUST the front page? If I’ve got the front page at least, I’m hoping that’d help my SEO situation, etc.

[Geoff]

Hi Saif, hope you had a great weekend!

I’m afraid we do not have documentation on that specific customization. However, here are some instructions for overriding the template you need:

• Make a copy of the list-widget.php file. It is located at /wp-content/plugins/the-events-calendar/src/views/widgets/list-widget.php.
• Make a new folder in your theme directory called tribe-events
• Make a new folder in that one called widgets
• Move your copied list-widget.php file in that last folder

Now that the template is in your theme, you can modify it to suit your needs. In this case, adding any markup for structured data that would help get picked up by search engines.

Sorry I don’t have more of a concrete solution for you, but will this at least help get you started? Please let me know.

Thanks,
Geoff

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

Posts