Enhancements to google search console events tracking

[Anonymous]

Hi, there are some changes to google search console events because of the covid19. I have received this email from google:

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

It would be great if there was eventStatus, VirtualLocation, OnlineEventAttendanceMode and (longer omitted) Performer properties that we can fill either automatically or manually.

Thanks for the hard work

[Franky]

I won’t implement eventStatus, since there are too much conditions to apply if you e.g. postpone an event (see https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/event#eventstatus ). And it is an optional field.
The field that has been implemented is eventAttendanceMode (location can now be a pure online location).
The performer field is also an optional field, and in many cases it doesn’t apply. E.g. we organize matches between schools, but nobody is a “performer” or “performer group” … I could put in the organizer there if that helps, but for the rest I would be asking for info that is only used in Google search results, and that is something I want to avoid. What I will do is add a filter to the json output, so you can add extra data to it (based on custom event fields for example). Edit: the filter eme_extra_event_headers_filter already does this …

[Anonymous]

Thanks a lot. Great info about eme_extra_event_headers_filter. I didn’t know about that.

[Franky]

Well, I reviewed the filter part and changed some stuff for the next version too:

* Existing filter eme_extra_event_headers_filter renamed to eme_extra_event_headers_json_filter, to indicate it is really only used for the json-part of the extra headers for an event
* New filter eme_extra_event_headers_filter that can filter on other extra event headers being added (meta tags)

[Anonymous]

I am trying to create a dynamic perfomer field generation based on category and a custom field value. I am stuck now. What is the best way to get categories names and custom fields values while in PHP. In $event array there are no custom fields and categories are referenced only by their ids. Thanks

[Franky]

For the category: $category=eme_get_category($category_id);
For the custom fields: $answers=eme_get_event_cf_answers($event[‘event_id’]);

[Anonymous]

Thanks

[Author]

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