It's been a while since we published this blog post. Some of the information may be outdated (for example, some images may be missing, and some links may not work anymore). Check out ourcurrent documentation on Event structured data.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Last year weintroduced Rich Snippets, a new feature that makes it possible to surface structured data from your pages on Google's search results. So far, user reaction to Rich Snippets has been enthusiastic—after all, Rich Snippets help people make more informed clicks and find what they need even faster.

We originally introduced Rich Snippets with two formats:reviews andpeople. Later in the year we added support for marking upvideo information which is used to improve Video Search. Today, we're excited to kick off the new year by adding support for events.

Events markup is based off of thehCalendar microformat. Here's an example of what the new events Rich Snippets will look like:

The new format shows links to specific events on the page along with dates and locations. It provides a fast and convenient way for users to determine if a page has events they may be interested in.

If you have event listings on your site, we encourage you to review theevents documentation we've prepared to help you get started. Please note, however, that marking up your content is not a guarantee that Rich Snippets will show for your site. Just as we did for previous formats, we will take a gradual approach to incorporating the new event snippets to ensure a great user experience along the way.

Stay tuned for more developments in Rich Snippets throughout the year!

Written by Mike Danylchuk and Nitin Shetti