Google Updates Event Structured Data Requirements

Google updated the Events structured data requirements. The update affects the offers.priceCurrency property. This change affects publishers who charge for events and want to have their events shown on Google. These requirements also affect paid online/home events.

Google Events Structured Data

The Google events structured data allows event organizers to be discovered in Google Search and Google Maps. Initially developed for physical events, the structured data is also appropriate for online events related to home activities.

Home activity events include video live-streams, pre-recorded video and online events. Examples of home activities are fitness workout events.

The use of the Event structured data makes an event eligible to be displayed as a rich result on Google search, as part of what Google calls the “event experience” in Google search.

The use of the Event structured data does not guarantee a rich result display in Google. It only makes the event eligible.

In order to be eligible, all of the required structured data must be presented to Google in the JSON-LD structured data, exactly as required.

Failure to use all of the required structured data can result in no longer being eligible for the event experience in Google search. And that’s why this change is very important.

The offers.priceCurrency property is a required property. This means that if Google finds it missing then then event may become ineligible.

Interactive Search Results

Google reports in a case study of the Event structured data, that the use of structured data for events helped Eventbrite gain a 100% increase in search traffic.

The structured data allows Google to display the event in Google search to potential customers.

According to Eventbrite:

“Within two or three weeks we started seeing a visual difference in our event search results on Google,” Jilo says. “The Google Search experience definitely helps drive more eyeballs to event pages. And when those people convert, it translates to incremental ticket sales for our event creators.”

offers.priceCurrency Structured Data

The offers.priceCurrency structured data is a requirement to state the currency of the price of the event by using the 3-letter ISO 4217 currency code. For example, the United States dollar 3-letter ISO 4217 currency code is USD.

Here is an example of what that looks like in structured data:

"offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "priceCurrency": "USD"
}

Very likely, publishers who charge for an event already have most of the structured data code already in place. The only additional piece to add is the priceCurrency part.

Original Article by Roger Montti

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