Digital Marketing, SEO, SMO, PPC Expert Dheeraj Bhagat

ORM | Online Reputation Management Recommendations

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Thu, 12 May 2016 13:59:00 +0000

1) Immediately respond to unhappy customers on social media and directory sites such as Yelp. Try, if you can, to respond publicly. Don't go on the defensive. Try to understand why the client had a bad experience. Respond to the review to address not only the upset client, but also to reassure other readers that the client's experience isn't routine.

2) If someone mentions something positive about you on a site such as Yelp, reward him or her with a coupon, freebie or a simple thank you. "People will remember and they'll become brand evangelists.

3) Get as many positive online reviews as possible. Not only do consumers usually trust online reviews, but Google usually gives higher search result placement to listings with a higher number of positive reviews.

4) If your customers are active on Twitter, make sure you have someone on your team dedicated to responding to them.

5) Optimize brand video with your company name on YouTube, which is widely considered to be the second largest search engine. In some cases, Google ranks YouTube videos higher than actual websites. Posting video and image content related to your business or personal name can help push the negative content further down in search results.

6) Quality content is a key. "The more awesome blog content you publish and promote, the more authority your brand name will carry. It will also serve to help push down in search results any negative reviews you may have accumulated.

7) Connect with the media. Developing relationships with journalists locally and in your field should be part of your overall marketing and reputation management plan. You should also use trusted resources such as Help a Reporter Out, which can help you get positive media exposure.

8) You should claim your entire online directory and review site listings right away. If someone else, such as a disgruntled employee, claims or has access to those accounts, "it could cause major (reputation) issues down the road."

9) Focus is essential. As a result, focus on monitoring "the biggest portals" such as Facebook, Twitter and Yelp.

v ORM Tools:

https://www.google.com/alerts

1) The no. 1 tool for online reputation management, according to the digital marketers we consulted, is Google Alerts. The free service lets you set up automated email alerts for your business name, product name and high-level executives' names, so you'll know as soon as a new mention is posted online.

2) You should use platforms that help you monitor your online reviews, such as ReviewPush, Sendible and Trackur, as well as any other sites specific to your industry.

3) The Google My Business tool set is impressive and it includes great visualizations of your reviews. Gaining favorable reviews on your Google My Business page will increase your chances of making it into the local search results.

4) Expert suggests using services such as NameChk or Know Em to create online profiles across social networks for your business to help outrank negative content.

v Here are few off page activities that we can do on priority basis:

Ø Community Creation in Social Networking Sites:

· Try to become a member of the most popular social networking sites like Myspace, Facebook, Linked In, Academy, etc. By doing this you can extend your network online, get connect with your friends, share things with each other, and promote your company/website to build an online reputation. This is most likely the same as Web 2.0 (Participatory Web), which means you have to show your active participation on a regular basis.

Ø Blogging:

· Write a blog of your own for your company/website and include lots of unique content. Be precise in what you're trying to convey for the users in your blog entry and promote your blog in blog directories and blog search engines. You can also promote your blog/website by posting comments in other service-related blogs which allow links in the comments section that are crawl able by the search engines (these blogs are commonly identified as Do-Follow Blogs).

Ø Forum Postings:

· Create a forum/online discussion board of your own and start a discussion or share topics with your friends. You can also post/reply to a thread in other service-related pre-existing forums that allow links in your signature which can be crawled by the search engines ("Do-Follow Forums").

Ø Search Engine Submission:

· Submit your website to the most popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alta vista, Alexa, All the web, Lycos, Excite, etc., to get listed for free.

Ø Directory Submission:

· Submit your websites to the topmost quality directories like DMOZ, Yahoo Directory, ZoomInfo, One Mission, Pegasus, etc. Nowadays many web directories may offer paid listings but don't go for it.

Ø Social Bookmarking:

· Do some social bookmarking in popular bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Propeller, etc. You should be very careful while doing this and you must properly handle the tags which are very essential to broadcast your news on a wide area network.

Ø Link Baiting:

· Suppose you have copied/published another website's news or content in your blog/website. Don't forget to place their website link as a reference. Do it for others and, if your content is trustworthy, let others do it for you. This is another way to increase your link popularity.

Ø Photo Sharing:

· Publish/share your website product pictures and make them public. Let your friends see them and comment on them too, which will help drive traffic towards your website. Do this in major photo sharing websites like Flickr, Picassa, Photo Bucket, Picli, etc.

Ø Video Promotions:

· Like with photo sharing, we can publish/share our product videos, expert opinions, and reviews of our product and make them public in YouTube, Metacafe, Dailymotion, etc.

Ø Business Reviews:

· Write reviews about others businesses or ask your friends/clients to write a review of your business in major business review sites like RateitAll, Shvoong, Kaboodle, Style feeder, etc.

Ø Local Listings & Yellow Pages:

· This will help you to reach a targeted audience. Submit your website to Google Local, Maps, Yahoo Local, Yellow Pages, Superpages, Hotfrog, etc.

Ø Article Submission:

· This will help you to attain some deep links for your website (though it's usually a slower process).

Ø Press Release Promotion:

· Go for PR submission in popular PR websites like 1888pressrelease, Open PR, PR Leap, etc. This will help you to publish your site in Google News.

Ø Classifieds Submission:

· Try Craigslist and other major classifieds sites like Kugli, Myspace, iMadespace, Vivastreet, etc.

Ø Social Shopping Network:

· Submit your products to Google Product Search, Yahoo Online Shopping, MSN Online Shopping, and other major social shopping network sites like Kaboodle, Style Feeder, Wists, Five Limes, Buzz Shout, Ohmybuzz, etc.

Ø Answers:

· If you don't spam, this is another great way to increase your link popularity (Yahoo Answers, Cha-Cha, Answer Bag, etc.)

Ø Document Sharing:

· Share your website documents like business documents, information brochures, and slides in Google Docs, Slide Share, etc. This will help you brand your website.

Ø RSS Directories Submission:

Also submit your website to RSS feed directories which, again, will help you attain more traffic.

Digital Marketing Agency

Firebase Auth

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 12:49:00 +0000

Documentation

Element wrapper for the Firebase authentication API (https://www.firebase.com/docs/web/guide/user-auth.html).

Properties

autoLogin

Booleandefault: false

When true, login will be attempted if login status check determines no user is logged in. Should generally only be used with provider types that do not present a login UI, such as 'anonymous'.

location

String

Firebase location URL (must have simple login enabled via Forge interface).

options

Object

Provider-specific options to pass to login, for provider types that take a second object to pass firebase-specific options. May be overridden atlogin()-time.

params

Object

Provider-specific parameters to pass to login. May be overridden atlogin()-time.

provider

Stringdefault: anonymous

Default login provider type. May be one of: anonymous, custom,password facebook, github, twitter, google.

redirect

Booleandefault: false

When true, authentication will try to redirect instead of using a popup if possible.

ref

Object readOnly notify

A pointer to the Firebase instance being used by the firebase-auth element.

statusKnown

Booleandefault: false readOnly notify

When true, login status can be determined by checking user property.

user

Object readOnly notify

When logged in, this property reflects the firebase user auth object.

Methods

changeEmail(oldEmail, newEmail, password)

oldEmail string
newEmail string

Changes the email of a "password provider"-based user account.

If the operation is successful, the email-changed event is fired.

If the operation fails, the error event is fired, with e.detail containing error information supplied from Firebase.

changePassword(email, oldPassword, newPassword)

email string
oldPassword string
newPassword string

Changes the password of a "password provider"-based user account.

If the operation is successful, the password-changed event is fired.

If the operation fails, the error event is fired, with e.detail containing error information supplied from Firebase.

createUser(email, password)

email string
password string

Creates a "password provider"-based user account.

If the operation is successful, the user-created event is fired.

If the operation fails, the error event is fired, with e.detail containing error information supplied from Firebase.

login(params, options)

params string

(optional)
options string

(optional)

Performs a login attempt, using the provider specified via attribute/property, or optionally via provider argument to the loginfunction. Optionally, provider-specific login parameters can be specified via attribute (JSON)/property, or via the params argument to the loginfunction.

If the login is successful, the login event is fired, with e.detail.usercontaining the authenticated user object from Firebase.

If login fails, the error event is fired, with e.detail containing error information supplied from Firebase.

If the browswer supports navigator.onLine network status reporting and the network is currently offline, the login attempt will be queued until the network is restored.

logout()

Performs a logout attempt.

If the login is successful, the logout event is fired.

If login fails, the error event is fired, with e.detail containing error information supplied from Firebase.

If the browswer supports navigator.onLine network status reporting and the network is currently offline, the logout attempt will be queued until the network is restored.

removeUser(email, password)

email string
password string

Removes a "password provider"-based user account.

If the operation is successful, the user-removed event is fired.

If the operation fails, the error event is fired, with e.detail containing error information supplied from Firebase.

sendPasswordResetEmail(email)

email string

Sends a password reset email for a "password provider"-based user account.

If the operation is successful, the password-reset event is fired.

If the operation fails, the error event is fired, with e.detail containing error information supplied from Firebase.

Digital Marketing Agency

Firebase Document

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 12:47:00 +0000

Documentation

An element wrapper for the Firebase API.

A <firebase-document> is a reference to a remote document somewhere on Firebase. The element fetchs a document at a provided location, and exposes it as an Object that is suitable for deep two-way databinding.

Example:

<firebase-document
  location="https://dinosaur-facts.firebaseio.com/dinosaurs"
  data="{{dinosaurs}}">

In the above example, if the dinosaurs object is data-bound elsewhere via Polymer's data-binding system, changes to the document will be automatically reflected in the remote document and any other clients referencing that document.

Properties

data

Object notify

The data object mapped to location.

query

Object notify

Firebase Query object corresponding to location.

Behaviors

Polymer.FirebaseQueryBehavior

Digital Marketing Agency

Firebase Collection

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 12:44:00 +0000

Documentation

An element wrapper for the Firebase API that provides a view into the provided Firebase location as an ordered collection.

By default, Firebase yields values as unsorted document objects, where each of the children are accessible via object keys. The <firebase-collection> element allows Firebase API orderBy, limitTo and other query-oriented methods to be specified declaratively. The element then produces and maintains an Array of ordered child items of the document that is convenient for iterating over in other elements such as <template is="dom-repeat">.

Example:

  <template is="dom-bind">
    <firebase-collection
      order-by-child="height"
      limit-to-first="3"
      location="https://dinosaur-facts.firebaseio.com/dinosaurs"
      data="{{dinosaurs}}"></firebase-collection>
    <template is="dom-repeat" items="[[dinosaurs]]" as="dinosaur">
      <h4>[[dinosaur.__firebaseKey__]]</h4>
      <span>Height: </span><span>[[dinosaur.height]]</span><span>m</span>
    </template>
  </template>

As you may have noticed above, the original key of each item is available as the__firebaseKey__ property on the item.

The element makes special accomodations for documents whose children are primitive values. A primitive value is wrapped in an object with the form:

{
  value: /* original primitive value */
  __firebaseKey__: /* key of primitive value in parent document */
}

Accessor methods such as add and remove are provided to enable convenient manipulation of the collection without direct knowledge of Firebase key values.

Properties

data

Arraydefault: [] readOnly notify

An ordered array of data items produced by the current Firebase Query instance.

endAt

Stringdefault:

Specify an end record for the set of records reflected in the collection.

equalTo

Stringdefault:

Specify to create a query which includes children which match the specified value. The argument type depends on which orderBy() function was used in this query. Specify a value that matches the orderBy() type.

limitToFirst

Numberdefault:

Specify a maximum number of records reflected on the client limited to the first certain number of children.

limitToLast

Numberdefault:

Specify a maximum number of records reflected on the client limited to the last certain number of children.

orderByChild

Stringdefault:

Specify a child key to order the set of records reflected on the client.

orderByKey

Booleandefault: false

Specify to order by key the set of records reflected on the client.

orderByPriority

Booleandefault: false

Specify to order by priority the set of records reflected on the client.

orderByValue

Booleandefault: false

Specify to order by value the set of records reflected on the client.

orderValueType

Stringdefault: string

Specify to override the type used when deserializing the value of start-at, end-at and equal-to attributes. By default, these values are always deserialized as String, but sometimes it is preferrable to deserialize these values as e.g., Number.

Accepted values for this attribute, and their corresponding deserialization types, are as follows:

string => String (default)
number => Number
boolean => Boolean

query

Object notify

A pointer to the current Firebase Query instance being used to populatedata.

startAt

Stringdefault:

Specify a start record for the set of records reflected in the collection.

Methods

add(data) ➙ Object

data Object

A value to add to the document.
Returns Object

A Firebase Query instance referring to the added item.

Add an item to the document referenced at location. A key associated with the item will be created by Firebase, and can be accessed via the Firebase Query instance returned by this method.

getByKey(key)

key String

The key associated with the item in the parent document.

Look up an item in the local data Array by key.

remove(data)

data Object

An identical reference to an item in this.data.

Remove an item from the document referenced at location. The item is assumed to be an identical reference to an item already in the dataArray.

removeByKey(key)

key String

The key associated with the item in the document located at location.

Remove an item from the document associated with location by key.

Behaviors

Polymer.FirebaseQueryBehavior

Digital Marketing Agency

Google Analytics Loader

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 12:40:00 +0000

Documentation

google-analytics-loader is used internally by elements that need to know api state, and user state.

Loads gapi.client.analytics, and watches user signed-in state.

Properties

allReady

Boolean notify

True when user is authorized, and api is loaded

apiReady

Booleandefault: false readOnly notify

True when api is loaded

authorized

Booleandefault: false readOnly notify

True when user is authorized

Methods

computeAllReady(apiReady, authorized)

default:''

handleApiFailedToLoad(ev, detail)

default:''

handleApiLoad()

default:''

handleAuthSignout()

default:''

handleAuthSuccess()

default

Digital Marketing Agency

Google Analytics Dashboard

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 12:38:00 +0000

Documentation

Element for grouping Google Analytics elements together.

<google-analytics-chart> elements inside a <google-analytics-dashboard>element will automatically update as control elements (e.g. <google-analytics-view-selector> or <google-analytics-date-selector>) update query parameters.

Example

<google-analytics-dashboard>

  <google-analytics-view-selector></google-analytics-view-selector>
  <google-analytics-date-selector></google-analytics-date-selector>

  <google-analytics-chart
    metrics="ga:sessions"
    dimensions="ga:country"
    sort="-ga:sessions"
    maxResults="5"
    chartType="column">
  </google-analytics-chart>

</google-analytics-dashboard>

Properties

authorized

Booleandefault: false

True if user has been authorized

query

Objectdefault: {}

The query attribute represents the internal query object of this dashboard. It is updated when control elements fire the analytics-dashboard-control-change event and pass along query data.

Methods

queryUpdated(event)

event CustomEvent

The event with the query data.

The queryUpdated method is the callback for whenever theanalytics-dashboard-control-change event is fired. It updates the query attribute, which is then sent to child charts.

updateChildren()

The updateChildren method updates each of this dashboards<google-analytics-chart> element with its current query value.

Digital Marketing Agency

Google Analytics Date Selector

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 12:35:00 +0000

Documentation

Element for selecting the start and end date values for queries inside a <google-analytics-dashboard> element.

Example

<google-analytics-dashboard>

  <google-analytics-date-selector
    startDate="30daysAgo"
    endDate="today">
  </google-analytics-date-selector>

  <google-analytics-chart
    ids="ga:1174"
    metrics="ga:sessions"
    dimensions="ga:date">
  </google-analytics-chart>

</google-analytics-dashboard>

Properties

endDate

Stringdefault: 'yesterday' notify

The endDate attribute is the end date for fetching Analytics data. Requests can specify an end date formatted as YYYY-MM-DD, or as a relative date (e.g., today, yesterday, or NdaysAgo where N is a positive integer).

See the Core Reporting API parameter reference for more details.

maxEndDate

Stringdefault: 'today'

The maxEndDate attribute is used as the max attribute on the end date<input>.

minStartDate

Stringdefault: '2005-01-01'

The minStartDate attribute is used as the min attribute on the start date <input>.

startDate

Stringdefault: '7daysAgo' notify

The startDate attribute is the start date for fetching Analytics data. Requests can specify a start date formatted as YYYY-MM-DD, or as a relative date (e.g., today, yesterday, or NdaysAgo where N is a positive integer).

See the Core Reporting API parameter reference for more details.

Methods

endDateChanged(cur, old)

default:''

startDateChanged(cur, old)

Digital Marketing Agency

Google Analytics View Selector

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 12:32:00 +0000

Documentation

Element for selecting the view ID (ids) value for queries inside a <google-analytics-dashboard> element.

Example

<google-analytics-dashboard>

  <google-analytics-view-selector></google-analytics-view-selector>

  <google-analytics-chart
    metrics="ga:sessions"
    dimensions="ga:date">
  </google-analytics-chart>

</google-analytics-dashboard>

Properties

account

Object

The account attribute is the currently selected account.

ids

String notify

The ids attribute, when found is used to preselect the chosen account, property, and view.

See the Core Reporting API parameter reference for more details.

property

Object

The property attribute is the currently selected property.

setupReady

Boolean

True if setup is ready

summaries

Objectdefault:

The summaries attribute contains an account summaries utility object with various helper methods for quickly getting account data.

See the Github repo for more details.

view

Object

The view attribute is the currently selected view.

Methods

accountChanged(newAccount, oldAccount)

default:''

fireChangeEvent()

Fire a change event passing all the currently stored data.

idsChanged(newIds, oldIds)

default:''

propertyChanged(newProperty, oldProperty)

default:''

setupReadyChanged(newVal, oldVal)

default:''

updateAccount()

The updateAccount method is bound to the change event on the account <select>. It updates the property and view <select>s based on the new account data. It also updates the ids attribute.

updateProperty()

The updateProperty method is bound to the change event on the property <select>. It updates the view <select> based on the new property data. It also updates the ids attribute.

updateView()

The updateView method is bound to the change event on the view<select>. It updates the ids attribute.

viewChanged(newView, oldView)

this.view = Path.get('views[0]').getValueFrom(newProperty);

Events

analytics-dashboard-control-change

query Object

The updated query params.

Fired when the users changes the view

Google Analytics Chart

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 12:30:00 +0000

Documentation

Element for displaying the results of a Google Analytics query in a Google Chart.

Example

<google-analytics-chart
  type="column"
  ids="ga:1174"
  metrics="ga:sessions"
  dimensions="ga:country"
  sort="-ga:sessions"
  maxResults="5">
</google-analytics-chart>

Properties

data

Objectdefault: ''

dimensions

Stringdefault: ''

endDate

Stringdefault: ''

filters

Stringdefault: ''

height

Numberdefault: 320

Sets the height of the chart on the page.

ids

Stringdefault: ''

loading

Booleandefault: false notify

True if the chart is currently loading data.

maxResults

Numberdefault: ''

metrics

Stringdefault: ''

options

Objectdefault: null

Sets the options for the chart.

Example:

{
  title: "Chart title goes here",
  hAxis: {title: "Categories"},
  vAxis: {title: "Values", minValue: 0, maxValue: 2},
  legend: "none"
};

See Google Visualization API reference (Chart Gallery) for the options available to each chart type.

rendered

Booleandefault: false notify

True after the chart has been rendered for the first time.

samplingLevel

Stringdefault: ''

segment

Stringdefault: ''

setupReady

Boolean

True if setup is ready

sort

Stringdefault: ''

startDate

String

google-analytics-query passthrough properties See google-analytics-query for documentation startDate, endDate, data, ids, metrics, dimensions, sort, filters, segment, samplingLevel, startIndex, maxResults

startIndex

Numberdefault: ''

type

Stringdefault: 'area'

Sets the type of the chart.

Should be one of:

area, bar, column, line, pie, geo.

width

Numberdefault: 480

Sets the width of the chart on the page.

Methods

handleResponse(response)

default:''

setupReadyChanged(newVal, oldVal)

Google Analytics Query

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 12:28:00 +0000

Documentation

Element for querying the Google Analytics Core Reporting API.

Example

<google-analytics-query
  ids="ga:1174"
  metrics="ga:sessions"
  dimensions="ga:country"
  sort="-ga:sessions"
  maxResults="5">
</google-analytics-query>

Properties

data

Objectdefault: {} notify

The data attribute is the response from a query to the Google Analytics Core Reporting API. This value will be updated as subsequent requests are made.

dimensions

Stringdefault: ''

The dimensions attribute is a list of comma-separated dimensions for your Analytics data, such as ga:browser,ga:city.

See the Core Reporting API parameter reference for more details.

endDate

Stringdefault: 'yesterday'

See the Core Reporting API parameter reference for more details.

fields

Stringdefault: ''

The fields attribute is a selector specifying a subset of fields to include in the response.

See the Core Reporting API parameter reference for more details.

filters

Stringdefault: ''

The filters attribute is dimension or metric filters that restrict the data returned for your request.

See the Core Reporting API parameter reference for more details.

ids

Stringdefault: ''

The ids attribute is the unique table ID of the form ga:XXXX, where XXXX is the Analytics view (profile) ID for which the query will retrieve the data.

See the Core Reporting API parameter reference for more details.

Note: you can find out the ids value for any of your Google Analytics account using the Google Analytics query explorer.

loading

Booleandefault: false notify

true if data is getting loaded

maxResults

Numberdefault: 0

The maxResults attribute is the maximum number of rows to include in the response.

See the Core Reporting API parameter reference for more details.

metrics

Stringdefault: ''

The metrics attribute is a list of comma-separated metrics, such as ga:sessions,ga:bounces.

See the Core Reporting API parameter reference for more details.

output

Stringdefault: ''

The output attribute sets the desired output type for the Analytics data returned in the response. Acceptable values are json and dataTable.

See the Core Reporting API parameter reference for more details.

samplingLevel

Stringdefault: ''

The samplingLevel attribute sets the desired sampling level. Allowed Values: DEFAULT, FASTER, HIGHER_PRECISION.

See the Core Reporting API parameter reference for more details.

segment

Stringdefault: ''

The segment attribute segments the data returned for your request.

See the Core Reporting API parameter reference for more details.

setupReady

Boolean

True if setup is ready

sort

Stringdefault: ''

The sort attribute is a list of comma-separated dimensions and metrics indicating the sorting order and sorting direction for the returned data.

See the Core Reporting API parameter reference for more details.

startDate

Stringdefault: '7daysAgo'

See the Core Reporting API parameter reference for more details.

startIndex

Numberdefault: 0

The startIndex attribute sets the first row of data to retrieve, starting at 1. Use this parameter as a pagination mechanism along with the max-results parameter.

See the Core Reporting API parameter reference for more details.

Methods

getData()

Query the Google Analytics Core Reporting API.

getDataResponseHandler()

handleResponse(response)

The callback for the query run in getData. This is a separate function so subclasses can alter how the response is handled.

setData(data)

setData sets data fetched by getData. Use it if you override getData response processing

Events

analytics-query-error

Fired when an error occurs while running a query.

analytics-query-success

Fired when a query is successfully run and data has been stored.

Increase user Engagement with Actions in Emails

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:57:00 +0000

Highlights in Inbox

Highlight your emails with important information and actions in Inbox by Gmail.

HIGHLIGHT KEY INFORMATION

Add Actions to Emails

Increase your users' engagement with interactive buttons in your emails.

PROVIDE ACTIONS

Answers in Search

Emails with markup appear in Google Search results when users search for tickets, flights and events.

ENABLE SEARCH ANSWERS

Now Cards

Google Now presents cards to the user in the right place and at the right time.

TRIGGER NOW CARDS

TV and Movie Watch Actions

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:53:00 +0000

Watch actions make Google Search an entry point for discovering and consuming TV shows and movies. Watch actions can appear in Google properties such as Knowledge Panel, enabling users to watch TV shows and movies from streaming services.

When a user searches for the name of a show on Google or on their mobile device, a Knowledge Panel "card" may appear prominently in the Search results. Watch actions in the card will use deep links to partner apps or web landing pages, bringing users directly from the Knowledge Panel to the specific episode or movie.

A deep link is a URL that points to a specific TV episode or movie from your inventory.

Integrating watch actions

Integrating watch actions is as straightforward as embedding schema.org markup in your landing page for the respective movie, TV episode, TV season, or TV season. Some example landing pages:

Movie: http://www.example.com/movies/forrest_gump
TV episode: http://www.example.com/tv/big_bang_theory/season1/episode1
TV season: http://www.example.com/tv/big_bang_theory/season1
TV series: http://www.example.com/tv/big_bang_theory

Movie and TV episode markup should contain WatchAction deep links to the full-length content.

TV season and TV series markup should contain ViewAction deep links to the respective landing page.

Markup format

You can embed data in a webpage using schema.org field names with the new JSON-LD data format. JSON-LD is easy to produce with many widely available JSON encoders. The <script type="application/ld+json"> ... </script> block as shown in the example below may be placed in either the or region of the page that displays that video game. Either way, it won’t affect how your document appears in users’ web browsers.

Important: Test your markup!

To test your markup, submit the HTML source of your marked-up web page to Google's structured data testing tool. If the tool reports No structured data present, then you likely have a syntax error such as a spurious comma. Otherwise, if the tool reports that any required fields are missing, please repair the data and try again.

Markup for movies and TV episodes

You can provide deep links for individal movies or television episodes using the following syntax.

For a streamlined user experience, deep links should support autoplay. On clicking a watch action link, your content should immediately start playing rather than directing the user to a landing page which requires subsequent clicks to initiate playback.

COMMON PROPERTIES MOVIE PROPERTIES TV EPISODE PROPERTIES

The following properties should be defined for every Movie and TVEpisode item.

Property	Type	Description
`@id` (Recommended)	Text	Globally unique ID of the Movie or TVEpisode. The ID should be stable and not change over time.
`name` (Required)	Text	Name of the Movie or TVEpisode.
`url`	URL	URL to partner's landing page for the Movie or TVEpisode.
`description`	Text	A synopsis of the work. Plot synopses are preferred to factual summaries.
`releasedEvent`(Recommended)	PublicationEvent	Annotation for the original release date.
releasedEvent.`startDate`(Recommended)	Date	Original broadcast/theatrical release date of the work, in ISO 8601 format.
releasedEvent.`location`	Country	Annotation for the country of original release.
releasedEvent.location.`name`	Text	Country in which the work was released on the above startDate. Use the 2-letter ISO 3166 country code.
`potentialAction`(Required)	WatchAction	Annotation(s) for the full-length Movie or TVEpisode. See the "Markup for deep links" section below for details.
`hasPart`	TVClip or Clip	Annotation(s) for short videos related to the Movie (use Clip) or TVEpisode (use TVClip).
hasPart.`description`	Text	One of the following values: "trailer": A preview or advertisement of the work. "behind_the_scenes": A summary of the production of the work. "highlight": A contiguous scene from the work.
hasPart.`timeRequired`	Text	Duration of the clip in ISO 8601 format, e.g. "PT2M5S" (2min 5sec).
hasPart.`potentialAction`	WatchAction	Annotation(s) for the clip. See the "Markup for deep links" section below for details.
`image`	ImageObject	Annotation(s) for images related to the work. Provide highest-resolution available. PNG and JPG preferred.
image.`height`	Integer	Height of the image in pixels.
image.`width`	Integer	Width of the image in pixels.
image.`url`	URL	URL where the image can be fetched.
`sameAs`	URL	URL to a reference web page that unambiguously identifies the work. Example: IMDB, Wikipedia.
`actor`	Person	Annotation(s) for each cast member.
actor.`name`	Text	Actor name.
actor.`sameAs`	URL	URL to a reference web page that unambiguously identifies the actor. Example: IMDB, Wikipedia.
`director`	Person	Annotation(s) of the director.
director.`name`	Text	Director name.
director.`sameAs`	URL	URL to a reference web page that unambiguously identifies the director. Example: IMDB, Wikipedia.

Markup for TV seasons and TV series

In addition to TV episode markup, you can also markup TV seasons and TV series if:

You have a distinct landing page for the TV season or series, separate from the episode landing pages.
You have different watch action offers for users if they rent or purchase the entire TV season or series at once. Example: purchasing the 16-episode second season of The Walking Dead may cost $28 as opposed to purchasing individual episodes for $1.99 each.

TV SEASON TV SERIES

Each season should have its own TVSeason annotation with the following properties.

Property	Type	Description
`@id` (Recommended)	Text	Globally unique ID of the TVSeason. The ID should be stable and not change over time.
`name`	Text	Name of the TVSeason, if it differs from the series name.
`sameAs`	URL	URL to a reference web page that unambiguously identifies the season. Example: IMDB, Wikipedia.
`url` (Recommended)	URL	URL to partner's season landing page.
`potentialAction`(Recommended)	ViewAction	Annotation(s) for the season. See the "Markup for deep links" section below for details.
`releasedEvent`(Recommended)	PublicationEvent	Annotation for the original release date of the first episode of the season.
releasedEvent.`startDate`(Recommended)	Date	Original broadcast date of the first episode of the season, in ISO 8601 format.
releasedEvent.`location`	Country	Annotation for the country of original release.
releasedEvent.location.`name`	Text	Country in which the season premiered on the above startDate. Use the 2-letter ISO 3166 country code.
`seasonNumber` (Required)	Integer	Position of the season within an ordered group of seasons.
`partOfSeries` (Required)	TVSeries	Annotation for the series of the season.
partOfSeries.`name` (Required)	Text	Name of the TV series.
partOfSeries.`sameAs`	URL	URL to a reference web page that unambiguously identifies the series. Example: IMDB, Wikipedia.

Markup for deep links

The potentialAction property of each Movie, TVEpisode, TVSeason, and TVSeries item should contain both the deep link(s) and any relevant condition(s), including:

The watch action is only available for a certain period.
The watch action is only available for a certain region.
The watch action requires a purchase or rental fee.
The watch action requires a subscription.
The watch action requires a subscription to an entity other than the partner, e.g. a cable subscription.

Properties

Each potentialAction should be either a WatchAction (Movie or TVEpisode items) or ViewAction (TVSeason or TVSeries items) with the following properties.

Property	Type	Description
`target` (Required)	URL	Deep link(s) to content. Examples: Desktop: "http://www.example.com/big_bang_theory/s7/e13?autoplay=true" Android: "android-app://com.app.foo/bar/big_bang_theory/s7/e13?autoplay=true" iOS: "ios-app://530168168/bar/big_bang_theory/s7/e13?autoplay=true"
`expectsAcceptanceOf` (Required)	Offer	Annotation(s) for the conditions of the deeplink.
expectsAcceptanceOf.`availabilityStarts`(Required)	Date	Date after which the watch action is available, in ISO 8601 format.
expectsAcceptanceOf.`availabilityEnds`(Required)	Date	Date after which the watch action is no longer available, in ISO 8601 format.
expectsAcceptanceOf.`eligibleRegion`(Recommended)	Country	Countries in which the watch action is available. If unspecified, we expect the action is available everywhere except where denoted in `potentialAction.expectsAcceptanceOf.ineligibleRegion`.
expectsAcceptanceOf.eligibleRegion.`name`(Recommended)	Text	Country name. Use the ISO 3166 country code.
expectsAcceptanceOf.`ineligibleRegion`	Country	Countries in which the watch action is not available. If unspecified, we expect the action is available everywhere unless `potentialAction.expectsAcceptanceOf.eligibleRegion` is specified.
expectsAcceptanceOf.ineligibleRegion.`name`	Text	Country name. Use the ISO 3166 country code.
expectsAcceptanceOf.`category` (Required)	Text	One of the following values: "rental": The watch action is available to the user after purchase for a finite amount of time. "purchase": The watch action is available to the user after purchase for an indefinite amount of time. "subscription": The watch action is included with a subscription to the partner itself. "externalSubscription": The watch action is included with a subscription to an external entity, e.g. cable provider. "free": The watch action is available with no purchase or subscription required of the user. The watch action may require a user login or contain ads.
expectsAcceptanceOf.`name`	Text	Name of the offer type, e.g. "High Definition", "Monthly subscription".
expectsAcceptanceOf.`price`	Numeric	Cost of the offer type. Do not include a currency symbol.
expectsAcceptanceOf.`priceCurrency`	Text	3-letter currency code of the price value in ISO 4217 format, e.g. "USD".
`seller`	Organization	Annotation for the company making the offer. Relevant only for offers where expectsAcceptanceOf.category is`externalSubscription`, i.e. the user requires a subscription to an entity other than the watch action partner. Example: HBO GO content requires a cable subscription.
seller.`name`	Text	The name of the external entity.
seller.`sameAs`	URL	URL to the official homepage of the external entity. Example: IMDB, Wikipedia.

The following examples demonstrate common use cases for the expectsAcceptanceOf property.

DATE RESTRICTION ONLY AVAILABLE IN US NOT AVAILABLE IN CHINA


"expectsAcceptanceOf": {

  "@type": "Offer",

  "availabilityStarts": "2014-10-01T00:00",

  "availabilityEnds": "2014-12-31T00:00"

}

Compound conditions

Conditions can be combined in a single expectsAcceptanceOf block.

Sample expectsAcceptanceOf block for a deep link that is available on different cable providers for different dates:


"expectsAcceptanceOf": [

  {

    "@type": "Offer",

    "availabilityStarts": "2014-10-01T00:00",

    "availabilityEnds": "2014-12-31T00:00",

    "category": "externalSubscription",

    "seller": {

      "@type": "Organization",

      "name": "Comcast",

      "sameAs": "http://www.comcast.com/"

    }

  },

  {

    "@type": "Offer",

    "availabilityStarts": "2015-01-01T00:00",

    "availabilityEnds": "2015-03-31T00:00",

    "category": "externalSubscription",

    "seller": {

      "@type": "Organization",

      "name": "Time Warner Cable",

      "sameAs": "http://www.timewarnercable.com/"

    }

  }

]

Sample markup

MOVIE TVEPISODE TVSEASON TVSERIES

An example of a full markup block for a single movie.


<script type="application/ld+json">

{

  "@context":"http://schema.org",

  "@id":"12546432",

  "@type":"Movie",

  "name":"Forrest Gump",

  "url":"http://www.example.com/forrest_gump",

  "description":"A man with a low I.Q. has accomplished great things in his life and been present during significant historic events.",

  "releasedEvent":{

    "@type":"PublicationEvent",

    "startDate":"1994-07-06",

    "location":{

      "@type":"Country",

      "name":"US"

    }

  },

  "potentialAction":{

    "@type":"WatchAction",

    "target":[

      "http://www.example.com/forrest_gump?autoplay=true",

      "android-app://com.app.foo/bar/forrest_gump?autoplay=true"

    ],

    "expectsAcceptanceOf":{

      "@type":"Offer",

      "availabilityStarts":"2015-01-01T00:00",

      "availabilityStarts":"2015-12-31T00:00",

      "category":"subscription",

      "name":"Hulu Plus",

      "price":7.99,

      "priceCurrency":"USD",

      "seller":{

        "@type":"Organization",

        "name":"Hulu",

        "sameAs":"http://www.hulu.com/"

      }

    }

  },

  "hasPart":{

    "@type":"Clip",

    "description":"trailer",

    "timeRequired":"PT2M5S",

    "potentialAction":{

      "@type":"WatchAction",

      "target":"android-app://com.app.foo/bar/watch/2356866",

      "expectsAcceptanceOf":{

        "category":"free",

        "availabilityStarts":"2014-09-01T00:00",

        "availabilityEnds":"2015-09-01T00:00"

      }

    }

  },

  "image":{

    "@type":"ImageObject",

    "height":600,

    "width":400,

    "url":"http://www.hulu.com/images/124564.jpg"

  },

  "sameAs":"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109830/",

  "actor":{

    "@type":"Person",

    "name":"Tom Hanks",

    "sameAs":"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000158/"

  },

  "director":{

    "@type":"Person",

    "name":"Robert Zemeckis",

    "sameAs":"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000709/"

  },

  "duration":"PT2H22M"

}

</script>

Handling deep link intent in your Android app

Your application's AndroidManifest.xml file must contain an intent filter with the following properties:

Accepts android.intent.action.VIEW
Accepts android.intent.category.BROWSABLE
Defines "android:scheme" in the <data> element

Here is an example intent filter:


<intent-filter>

  <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW"/>

  <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>

  <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE"/>

  <data android:scheme="cbs"/>

</intent-filter>

You can read more about implementing this intent in the Android developer documentation.

Deep links should follow the standard URI format. You can read more about the URI here. Example:

android-app://com.cbs.app/cbs/shows/bbt/vid/2356865/occupation_recal?campaign=google_kp_watch

You can test your deep links with the deep link tester.

Music Play Actions

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:49:00 +0000

Music actions make Google Search an entry point for discovering and listening to music artists and their songs. Music actions can appear in Google properties such as Knowledge Panel, enabling users to listen to songs from streaming services.

When a user searches for the name of an artist on Google or on their mobile device, a Knowledge Panel "card" may appear prominently in the Search results. Music actions in the card will use deep links to partner apps or web landing pages, bringing users directly from the Knowledge Panel to the specific artist.

Integrating music actions is straightforward:

Landing pages must contain appropriate schema.org markup. For a streamlined user experience, we recommend deep links support autoplay. When users click a Music Action link, partner content should immediately start playing -- instead of directing the user to a landing page where they must click again to start playback.

Integration requirements

Landing pages with the following schema.org markup
1. MusicGroup
2. MusicAlbum
3. ListenAction
First click free and autoplay functionality
Google auth integration

Integration details

By integrating with Music Actions, a partner will qualify to surface "deep links" in Knowledge Graph results on Google Search that will begin auto-playing media content. A deep link is a URL that points to a specific music artist or album from the partner's inventory.

Schema.org markup

Music Actions enable a partner to surface "Listen" actions by making the Knowledge Graph aware of its available albums and artist radio stations. The minimum requirements for this integration are annotations of the partner's artist and album landing pages using the following industry standard schema.org markup

MusicGroup - a musical group or solo musician
MusicAlbum - a collection of music tracks
ListenAction - a link that begins playing media content

For example, iHeart could mark up auto-play links like this:

JSON-LD MICRODATA

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "http://schema.org",
  "@type": "MusicGroup",
  "url": [
    "http://www.iheart.com/artist/Katy-Perry-35141/",
    "android-app://com.clearchannel.iheartradio.controller/ihr/listen/custom_radio/artist/35141"
  ],
  "name": "Katy Perry",
  "sameAs": "http://www.katyperry.com",
  "description": "Katy Perry is a pop music artist.",
  "potentialAction": {
    "@type": "ListenAction",
    "target": [
      "http://www.iheart.com/artist/Katy-Perry-35141/?autoplay=true&ext=1&playedFrom=197",
      "android-app://com.clearchannel.iheartradio.controller/ihr/listen/custom_radio/artist/35141?ext=1&played_from=197"
    ]
  }
}
</script>

While we encourage partners to provide as much markup as they would like for MusicGroup and MusicAlbum, there is a minimum set of fields that should be provided. The following table lists the required and recommended fields.

Property	Type	Description
`name` (Required)	Text	Artist or album name.
`description` (Required)	Text	A biography of the artist or a description of the album.
`url` (Required)	URL	URL of the landing page of the artist or album on the partner site.
`image`	URL	URL of an image of the artist or album.
`sameAs` (Recommended)	URL	URL of a page that unambiguously identifies the artist or album. Example: Wikipedia.
`potentialAction`(Required)	ListenAction	Deeplink annotation(s).
potentialAction.`target`(Required)	ListenAction	Deeplink URI(s) to listen to the artist's/album's songs. Example: Desktop: `http://www.foo.com/lady_gaga?autoplay=true` Android: `android-app://{apk_name}/{scheme}/{host_path}`. See here for details. iOS: `ios-app://{app_store_id}/{scheme}/{host_path}`. Seehere for details.

Besides providing this information in markup, it is important that the information is visible to users on the page as well. The partner should also note that we will be using Googlebot to crawl their pages; it is okay for the schema.org markup to appear only to Googlebot.

Providing regional/time/paywall restrictions

The partner may have restrictions on which regions can listen to songs or when certain songs are available. Or access to the partner's inventory may be restricted to paying customers only. In such cases, the partner should provide details about the restrictions in the schema.org markup.

The following table lists the restrictions that partners can provide in their markup in each potentialAction.

Property	Type	Description
`expectsAcceptanceOf` (Required)	Offer	Annotation for the condition(s) that must be met for the Music Action to be available.
expectsAcceptanceOf.`availabilityStarts`	Date	Date after which the Music Action is available, in ISO 8601 format. If unspecified, we expect the action is available anytime prior to`potentialAction.expectsAcceptanceOf.availabilityEnds`.
expectsAcceptanceOf.`availabilityEnds`	Date	Date after which the Music Action is no longer available, in ISO 8601 format. If unspecified, we expect the action is available indefinitely after `potentialAction.expectsAcceptanceOf.availabilityStarts`.
expectsAcceptanceOf.`eligibleRegion`(Required)	Country	If unspecified, we expect the Music Action is available everywhere except where denoted in `potentialAction.expectsAcceptanceOf.ineligibleRegion`.
expectsAcceptanceOf.eligibleRegion.`name`(Required)	Text	The 2-letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code.
expectsAcceptanceOf.`ineligibleRegion`	Country	If unspecified, we expect the Music Action is available everywhere unless `potentialAction.expectsAcceptanceOf.eligibleRegion` is specified.
expectsAcceptanceOf.ineligibleRegion.`name`	Text	The 2-letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code.
expectsAcceptanceOf.`category`	Enum	One of the following: "purchase": The Music Action is available to the user after purchase for an indefinite amount of time. "subscription": The Music Action is included with a subscription to the partner itself. "free": The Music Action is available with no purchase or subscription required of the user. The Music Action may require a user login or contain ads. This value defaults to "free".
expectsAcceptanceOf.`name`	Text	Name of the offer type.
expectsAcceptanceOf.`price`	Numeric	Cost of the offer type.
expectsAcceptanceOf.`priceCurrency`	Text	The 3-letter ISO 4217 currency code of the price value.

The following are sample markup for various restriction cases.

US ONLY NOT AVAILABLE IN CHINA US AND CANADA, BY SUBSCRIPTION US FIRST, LATER IN CANADA

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "http://schema.org",
  "@type": "MusicAlbum",
  "name": "Example Album",
  "description": "A group of great songs.",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/listen",
  "image": "http://www.example.com/image",
  "potentialAction": {
    "@type": "ListenAction",
    "target": "https://www.example.com/listen",
    "expectsAcceptanceOf": {
      "@type": "Offer",
      "eligibleRegion": {
        "@type": "Country",
        "name": "US"
      }
    }
  }
}
</script>

Testing markup

Partners should test their markup by using the Structured Data Testing Tool. You can either provide a single URL or paste HTML to see how Google interprets your markup.

There are a few things to look for while using this tool:

Make sure that the top-level and first schema.org entity corresponds with the page's main content. For example, if the page is for Bruno Mars, the first and top-most entity should be MusicGroup. If it's for a Katy Perry album, the first and top-most entity should be MusicAlbum.
There will be a warning message about potentialAction. It is okay to ignore that message for now. However, make sure that potentialAction hangs off of the right entity and the "target" URLs are correctly specified.

Handling deep link intent in your Android app

The intent-filter that you use to handle requests from Google should use the VIEW action. After launching the deeplink, the app should automatically start playing music. A common way to use the same deeplink for both Music Play Actions and app indexing is to use a URL parameter to signal autoplay, e.g. &autoplay=true.

The "content" in the markup above that begins with "android-app://" provides Google with deep links into your app for specific artists or albums. The format of the "android-app://" URI is as follows:

android-app://<package name of your app>/<android:scheme>/<rest of the deep link>

Google will translate this annotation to the following deep link to use to open your app:

<android:scheme>://<rest of the deep link>

So for the Katy Perry example above, the following:

android-app://com.clearchannel.iheartradio.controller/ihr/listen/custom_radio/artist/35141?ext=1&played_from=197

would indicate to Google that the app can be opened to play Katy Perry with the following deep link:

ihr://listen/custom_radio/artist/35141?ext=1&played_from=197

You need to also specify the <data> element in your intent-filter. For the example above, the intent-filter would be specified as follows in your app's manifest file:

<intent-filter>
  <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW"/>
  <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
  <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE"/>
  <data android:scheme="ihr"/> </intent-filter>

You can test that your app properly handles the deep links by using the following ADB command:

adb shell am start "[deep link]"

Further, you can test it by creating an HTML page that has the following links:

intent://listen/custom_radio/artist/35141?ext=1&played_from=197#Intent;scheme=ihr;package=com.clearchannel.iheartradio.controller;action=android.intent.action.VIEW;end

This will open the iHeart app with the VIEW action on this deep link:

ihr://listen/custom_radio/artist/35141?ext=1&played_from=197

You can learn more about these "intent" links here.

Enabling Rich Snippets for Events

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:43:00 +0000

Event markup describes the details of organized events, such as musical concerts or art festivals, that people may attend at a particular time and place. Events that meet Google’s policy guidelines may be eligible for Rich Snippets in search results, as described in this document, as well as for display in Knowledge-Graph-powered features, documented separately.

Event Rich Snippets add one or more lines with structured details of upcoming events below your search result, like this:

Basic markup properties

The full list of properties for an event are described on schema.org/Event. Use the most specific applicablesubtype of Event, such as ComedyEvent, Festival, FoodEvent, MusicEvent, TheaterEvent, or SportsEvent. Please mark up as many properties as you can, as they will help Google algorithms correctly index your pages. The following subset of properties is required to be eligible for Event rich snippets:

Property	Type	Description
`name` (required)	Text	The name of the event. This is shown in the rich snippet. See specific policies about event names below.
`url` (required*)	URL	A link to the event's details page. * Required if the event's details are on a different page. If the event is described on the page you are marking up, there is no need to mark up the url property.
`location` (required)	Place or PostalAddress	The location or venue of the event. A text string is permitted, but we recommend that you represent the location by using a nested Place or Organization to separately specify a venue name and its address.
`startDate` (required)	Date	The starting date and time of the event. See important information about the requirement for ISO 8601 date format.
`offers` (optional)	Offer	An offer to buy tickets for this event. If present, some subfields are required.
offers.`price` (required)	Number	The lowest available price, including service charges and fees, of this type of ticket.
offers.`priceCurrency`(required)	Text	The 3-letter currency code.

Example Event markup for rich snippets

The following example describes some basic information about a music concert, including the name, date and time, location, and URL for more information.

You can use the Structured Data Testing Tool to check that your markup is correct.


<script type="application/ld+json">

{

  "@context": "http://schema.org",

  "@type": "Event",

  "name": "Example Band goes to San Francisco",

  "startDate" : "2013-09-14T21:30",

  "url" : "http://example.com/tourdates.html",

  "location" : {

    "@type" : "Place",

    "sameAs" : "http://www.hi-dive.com",

    "name" : "The Hi-Dive",

    "address" : "7 S. Broadway, Denver, CO 80209"

  }

}

</script>

Event-specific usage guidelines and policies

In addition to the general policies that apply to all rich snippets, the following extra policies apply for Event rich snippets:

Events in the past will not be shown as a rich snippet. Leaving them marked up is still recommended.
Since Event rich snippets are not meant for advertising purposes, your event name should not contain any promotional elements such as the price of the event, a call to purchase, or an indication of a sale or temporary discount. For sales events, use the equivalent markup but using schema.org/SaleEvent. Invalid event names:
- Trip package: San Diego/LA, 7 nights (Don't use rich snippets markup to promote non-event products or services.)
- Music festival - only $10! (Instead, mark up ticket prices using the tickets property.)
- Sale on dresses! (Non-event information)
- Concert - buy your tickets now! (Promotion)
- Concert - 50% off until Saturday! (Promotion)

Event Markup: Primary Ticketers

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:40:00 +0000

If you are a primary ticketer who sells the official inventory of an event's tickets on behalf of the event's organizer, then Google can incorporate structured data markup from your website into the Knowledge Graph. This data may then be displayed across Google Search and other products, in two ways:

When performers or venues have events that link to your site for tickets, the markup on your site may be used to provide information such as pricing, on-sale dates, availability, and ticket links on Google.
When performers and venues have not themselves provided markup on their official websites, your markup may be used as a source of basic event data such as event name, date, location, and details link.

This document describes in detail how primary ticketer sites should mark up their events to maximize eligibility for Google's event features.

For a 10-minute video tutorial on how Google uses event markup, please see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXw8g-FbemI

Markup specification

Each event should be specified with the most specific applicable subtype of schema.org/Event. Popular subtypes include ComedyEvent, Festival, FoodEvent, MusicEvent, TheaterEvent, and SportsEvent. This helps search engines categorize your event, and in some cases lets you specify extra fields relevant to that type of event, such as the "homeTeam" and "awayTeam" for a SportsEvent, or the "workPerformed" for a TheaterEvent.

The following table indicates the full set of event fields used by Google events projects.

Property	Type	Description
`name` (required)	Text	The title of the event.
`image`	URL	URL of an image or logo for the event or tour
`url`	URL	URL of a page providing details about the event.
`startDate` (required)	Date	The start date and time of the event, in ISO-8601 format.
`doorTime`	DateTime	The time admission commences, in ISO-8601 format.
`endDate`	Date	The end date and time of the event, in ISO-8601 format.
`eventStatus`	EventStatusType	The event's cancellation status, if applicable. Must be one of the example values at right.
`previousStartDate`	Date	The previously scheduled date (only if eventStatus is set).
`typicalAgeRange`	Text	The expected age range.
`location` (required)	Place	A nested schema.org/Place (or more specific subtype, such as schema.org/EventVenue or schema.org/PerformingArtsTheater).
location.`name` (required)	Text	The venue name.
location.`sameAs`	URL	The URL of the venue's official website.
location.`address` (required)	PostalAddress	The venue's address. You may either provide the whole address as a single string, or provide the separate fields of the address in a nested schema.org/PostalAddress.
location.address.`streetAddress`		The street address.
location.address.`addressLocality`		The locality or city.
location.address.`addressRegion`		The region or state.
location.address.`postalCode`		The postal code.
location.address.`addressCountry`		The country code.
`offers`	Offer	A nested schema.org/Offer, one for each ticket type.
offers.`url` (recommended)		The URL of a page providing the ability to buy tickets. This URL must: direct to a landing page which clearly and predominantly provides, to any user from the general public, the opportunity to buy a ticket offering admittance to that specific event be a link that is also present as a clickable link on the web page containing the data (i.e., not only in the markup) be followable by the Googlebot, i.e., not blocked by robots.txt
offers.`name`		A user-visible name for the ticket type.
offers.`category` (required)		Google recognizes the following values in this field: primary: tickets available to the general public directly from the official representative of the event organizer or venue secondary: tickets made available for resale after direct purchase presale: tickets available early only to a subset of the public premium: tickets with special benefits in addition to admission Note: offers marked 'primary' will be given precedence in search contexts.
offers.`price` (required)		The lowest available price, including service charges and fees, of this type of ticket.
offers.`priceCurrency` (required)		The 3-letter currency code (unless included in price value).
offers.`availability` (required)		The availability status of tickets.
offers.`validFrom`		The ISO-8601 date and time when tickets go on sale (only required on date-restricted offers).
offers.`validThrough`		The ISO-8601 date and time when tickets go off sale (only required on date-restricted offers).
`performer`	Person	A nested schema.org/PerformingGroup or schema.org/Person, one for each performer.
performer.`name`		The performer's name.
performer.`sameAs`		The URL of the performer's official website or Wikipedia page.
`workPerformed`	CreativeWork	A nested schema.org/CreativeWork, used to represent each play, dance, or classical music piece being performed at the event (if applicable).
workPerformed.`name`		The name of the creative work being performed.
workPerformed.`sameAs`		The URL of the work's Wikipedia page or other reference page.
`awayTeam` `homeTeam`	SportsTeam	(Pending schema.org proposal for SportsEvent only, where applicable.)
homeTeam.`name` awayTeam.`name`		The name of the team.
homeTeam.`sameAs` awayTeam.`sameAs`		The URL of the team's official website or Wikipedia page.

Markup example: concert tickets

The following example shows how to mark up concert event information. The example is shown in JSON-LD syntax. Alternatively, you can mark up your content in Microdata or RDFa syntax if you prefer.


<script type="application/ld+json">

[{

    "@context" : "http://schema.org",

    "@type" : "MusicEvent",

    "name" : "B.B. King with Jonathon \"Boogie\" Long",

    "image" : "http://www.bbking.com/gallery/b-b-king-live.jpg",

    "url" : "http://www.bbking.com/events/apr12-providence.html",

    "startDate" : "2014-04-12T19:30",

    "doorTime" : "18:30",

    "endDate" : "2014-04-12T22:00",

    "eventStatus" : "EventRescheduled",

    "previousStartDate" : "2013-09-30T19:30",

    "typicalAgeRange" : "18+",

    "location" :

    {

        "@type" : "Place",

        "name" : "Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel",

        "sameAs" : "http://lupos.com/",

        "address" :

        {

            "@type" : "PostalAddress",

            "streetAddress" : "79 Washington St.",

            "addressLocality" : "Providence",

            "addressRegion" : "RI",

            "postalCode" : "02903",

            "addressCountry" : "US"

        }

    },

    "offers" : 

    [{

        "@type" : "Offer",

        "name" : "General Admission",

        "category" : "primary",

        "price" : "$63.25",

        "availability" : "SoldOut",

        "url" : "http://www.bbking.com/ticket/17004C29"

    },{

        "@type" : "Offer",

        "name" : "VIP Experience",

        "category" : "premium",

        "url" : "http://www.bbking.com/ticket/vip/Abcde12345",

        "price" : "$299.00",

        "validFrom" : "2014-02-05T10:00",

        "validThrough" : "2014-03-19T23:59"

    }],

    "performer" :

    [{

        "@type" : "MusicGroup",

        "name" : "B.B. King",

        "sameAs" : "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.B._King"

    },{

        "@type" : "MusicGroup",

        "name" : "Jonathon \"Boogie\" Long",

        "sameAs" : "http://jonathonboogielong.com/"

    }]

}]

</script>

Markup example: theater tickets

The following example shows how to mark up event information for theater performances. The markup represents a single performance; for multiple performances, simply repeat the markup for each performance. All examples are shown in JSON-LD syntax. Alternatively, you can mark up your content in Microdata or RDFa syntax if you prefer.


<script type="application/ld+json">

{

  "@context": "http://schema.org",

  "@type": "TheaterEvent",

  "name": "Julius Caesar at Shakespeare's Globe",

  "location":

  {

    "@type": "PerformingArtsTheater",

    "name": "Shakespeare's Globe",

    "sameAs": "http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/",

    "address": "London, UK"

  },

  "offers":

  [{

    "@type": "Offer",

    "name": "Standing (Yard)",

    "url": "https://tickets.shakespearesglobe.com/performances.asp?PerIndex=287339",

    "category": "primary",

    "price": "£7.50",

    "availability": "http://schema.org/InStock"

  },{

    "@type": "AggregateOffer",

    "name": "Lower Gallery",

    "url": "https://tickets.shakespearesglobe.com/performances.asp?PerIndex=287339",

    "category": "primary",

    "lowPrice": "£17.50",

    "highPrice": "£44.50",

    "availability": "http://schema.org/LimitedAvailability"

  }],

  "startDate": "2014-10-01T19:30",

  "workPerformed":

  {

    "@type": "CreativeWork",

    "name": "Julius Caesar",

    "sameAs": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar_(play)",

    "creator":

    {

      "@type": "Person",

      "name": "William Shakespeare",

      "sameAs": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare"

    }

  }

}

</script>

Markup example: music festival tickets

This examples shows typical markup for a music festival, with ticketing details and performer information.

MUSIC FESTIVAL


<script type="application/ld+json">

{

  "@context" : "http://schema.org",

  "@type" : "Festival",

  "name" : "Thank You Festival",

  "image" : "http://cdn.ticketfly.com/i/00/01/10/12/37-atxl1.jpg",

  "startDate" : "2014-06-26T16:00",

  "typicalAgeRange" : "All Ages",

  "location" : {

     "@type" : "EventVenue",

     "name" : "Merriweather Post Pavilion",

     "address" : "10475 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia, MD"

  },

  "offers" : {

     "@type" : "AggregateOffer",

     "category" : "primary",

     "lowPrice" : "$45.00",

     "highPrice" : "$549.50",

     "url" : "http://www.ticketfly.com/purchase/event/545417/tfly"

  },

  "performer" : [

    { "@type" : "MusicGroup", "name" : "Tiesto", "sameAs" : "http://www.tiesto.com" },

    { "@type" : "MusicGroup", "name" : "Above and Beyond", "sameAs" : "http://www.aboveandbeyond.nu" },

    { "@type" : "MusicGroup", "name" : "Krewella", "sameAs" : "http://www.krewella.net" },

    { "@type" : "MusicGroup", "name" : "Cedric Gervais", "sameAs" : "http://www.cedricgervais.com" },

    { "@type" : "MusicGroup", "name" : "Alvin Risk", "sameAs" : "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Risk" }

  ]

}

</script>

FAQ for Ticketer Events Markup

My site's event listings are spread over multiple web pages. How should I mark them up?

It is fine to include markup on multiple pages of events; Google will collect event details from all the pages it indexes on your site.

Will Google recognize event markup in dynamically generated (e.g. AJAX) web pages?

JSON-LD markup inserted by Javascript that runs upon initial page load can be recognized. Other forms of markup in dynamic content are not supported.

Event Markup: Official Venue Sites

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:37:00 +0000

Google shows venues' event schedules to millions of users each day in Google Search, Google Maps, and other products. With your venue's calendar displayed on Google, people can easily see event details and find where to buy tickets. To be eligible for these features and to ensure that Google has the right data, you must provide up-to-date event schedules using structured data markup on your official website. This document describes how.

For a 10-minute video tutorial on how Google uses event markup, please see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXw8g-FbemI

Providing event data on venue sites

Google’s new approach to organizing event data depends on finding complete event information on each venue’s official website. Human-readable event listings are not sufficient; instead, the venue’s website must include structured data about each upcoming event. There are three ways to provide this structured data:

Add HTML markup directly to the event listings. This is a good option if you have a custom event platform, want full control over all fields, and don’t mind a little coding.
Use a markup-compatible events plugin or widget. This is an easy, reliable option if your events listing is powered by one of the supported platforms listed under Option 2 below.
Rely on your venue's primary ticketer(s) to add structured data markup to their websites. Google will supplement the venue site's event listings with events found on ticketer websites.

Option 1: Add HTML Event Markup Directly

For websites whose HTML templates can be edited directly, the best approach is to add structured markup code to a page on the website that lists events. The page could be either the website’s home page; a page linked from the home page (e.g., my-venue.com/calendar); or individual “event details” pages for each event. If your event listings are spread over multiple pages, add markup to each page individually. Google will collect event details from all the pages it indexes on your site.

You can embed data in a web page using schema.org field names and the new JSON-LD data format. JSON-LD is easy to produce with many widely available JSON encoders. The data, enclosed within the <script type="application/ld+json"> ... </script> tags as shown in the examples below, may be placed in either the <HEAD> or <BODY> region of the page that displays that event. Either way, it won’t affect how your document appears in users’ web browsers.

Option 2: Use a Markup-Compatible Events Plugin or Widget

Some venue-oriented event management platforms have built-in support for adding structured data markup to the event listings they generate. If your site uses one of the following platforms or widgets, Google should understand your events automatically:

GigPress plugin for WordPress — version 2.3.3 or later
Ohanah plugin for Joomla — version 2.0 or later
Songkick Concerts and Festivals plugin for WordPress — version 0.93 or later
ReverbNation Show Schedule widget
Songkick Tourbox widget

Option 3: Rely On Your Ticketer's Markup

Google can supplement a venue's event listings with events found on primary ticketer websites. If all of your venue's events are listed on a ticketer website that provides thorough structured data markup, you don't need to mark up your venue's website. However, note that events sourced from a ticketer site will show details links that click through to that ticketer, rather than to your venue site.

Examples of ticketers providing complete markup include: Ticketmaster, Ticketfly, TicketWeb, AXS, LaughStub, Wantickets, Holdmyticket, ShowClix, Stranger Tickets, Ticket Alternative, Digitick, See Tickets, Tix, Fnac Spectacles, Ticketland.ru, iTickets, MIDWESTIX, Ticketleap, and Instantseats.

Markup specification

The following table indicates the full set of event fields used by Google from venue official websites:

Property	Type	Description
`name` (required)	Text	The title of the event.
`image`	URL	URL of an image or logo for the event or tour
`url`	URL	URL of a page providing details about the event.
`startDate` (required)	Date	The start date and time of the event, in ISO-8601 format.
`doorTime`	DateTime	The time admission commences, in ISO-8601 format.
`endDate`	Date	The end date and time of the event, in ISO-8601 format.
`eventStatus`	EventStatusType	The event's cancellation status, if applicable. Must be one of the example values at right.
`previousStartDate`	Date	The previously scheduled date (only if eventStatus is set).
`typicalAgeRange`	Text	The expected age range.
`location` (required)	Place	A nested schema.org/Place (or more specific subtype, such as schema.org/EventVenue or schema.org/PerformingArtsTheater).
location.`name` (required)	Text	The venue name.
location.`sameAs`	URL	The URL of the venue's official website.
location.`address` (required)	PostalAddress	The venue's address. You may either provide the whole address as a single string, or provide the separate fields of the address in a nested schema.org/PostalAddress.
location.address.`streetAddress`		The street address.
location.address.`addressLocality`		The locality or city.
location.address.`addressRegion`		The region or state.
location.address.`postalCode`		The postal code.
location.address.`addressCountry`		The country code.
`offers`	Offer	A nested schema.org/Offer, one for each ticket type.
offers.`url` (recommended)		The URL of a page providing the ability to buy tickets. This URL must: direct to a landing page which clearly and predominantly provides, to any user from the general public, the opportunity to buy a ticket offering admittance to that specific event be a link that is also present as a clickable link on the web page containing the data (i.e., not only in the markup) be followable by the Googlebot, i.e., not blocked by robots.txt
offers.`name` [*]		A user-visible name for the ticket type.
offers.`category` [*]		Google recognizes the following values in this field: primary: tickets available to the general public directly from the official representative of the event organizer or venue secondary: tickets made available for resale after direct purchase presale: tickets available early only to a subset of the public premium: tickets with special benefits in addition to admission Note: offers marked 'primary' will be given precedence in search contexts.
offers.`price` [*]		The lowest available price, including service charges and fees, of this type of ticket.
offers.`priceCurrency` [*]		The 3-letter currency code (unless included in price value).
offers.`availability` [*]		The availability status of tickets.
offers.`validFrom` [*]		The ISO-8601 date and time when tickets go on sale (only required on date-restricted offers).
offers.`validThrough` [*]		The ISO-8601 date and time when tickets go off sale (only required on date-restricted offers).
`performer`	Person	A nested schema.org/PerformingGroup or schema.org/Person, one for each performer.
performer.`name`		The performer's name.
performer.`sameAs`		The URL of the performer's official website or Wikipedia page.
`workPerformed`	CreativeWork	A nested schema.org/CreativeWork, used to represent each play, dance, or classical music piece being performed at the event (if applicable).
workPerformed.`name`		The name of the creative work being performed.
workPerformed.`sameAs`		The URL of the work's Wikipedia page or other reference page.
`awayTeam` `homeTeam`	SportsTeam	(Pending schema.org proposal for SportsEvent only, where applicable.)
homeTeam.`name` awayTeam.`name`		The name of the team.
homeTeam.`sameAs` awayTeam.`sameAs`		The URL of the team's official website or Wikipedia page.

Markup examples: Concerts

The following examples show how to mark up venue event schedules. All examples are shown in JSON-LD syntax. Alternatively, you can mark up your content in microdata or RDFa syntax if you prefer.

CONCERT: SIMPLE VERSION CONCERT: EXPANDED/TICKETER VERSION CLASSICAL MUSIC CONCERT


<script type="application/ld+json">

[{

  "@context" : "http://schema.org",

  "@type" : "MusicEvent",

  "name" : "B.B. King",

  "startDate" : "2014-04-12T19:30",

  "location" : { 

     "@type" : "Place",

     "name" : "Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel",

     "address" : "79 Washington St., Providence, RI"

  },

  "offers" : {

     "@type" : "Offer",

     "url" : "https://www.etix.com/ticket/1771656"

  }

},

{

  "@context" : "http://schema.org",

  "@type" : "MusicEvent",

  "name" : "B.B. King",

  "startDate" : "2014-04-13T20:00",

  "location" : { 

     "@type" : "Place",

     "name" : "Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel",

     "address" : "79 Washington St., Providence, RI"

  },

  "offers" : {

     "@type" : "Offer",

     "url" : "https://www.etix.com/ticket/1771657"

  }

}]

</script>

Markup example: Theater performances

The following examples show alternate ways to mark up event information for theater performances. The markup represents a single performance; for multiple performance, simply repeat the markup for each performance. All examples are shown in JSON-LD syntax. Alternatively, you can mark up your content in Microdata or RDFa syntax if you prefer.

Theater performance: simple version - Basic full markup for a theater event. Theater performance: expanded/ticketer version - Markup for a theater event, including ticketing details.

THEATER PERFORMANCE: SIMPLE VERSION THEATER PERFORMANCE: EXPANDED/TICKETER VERSION


<script type="application/ld+json">

{

  "@context": "http://schema.org",

  "@type": "TheaterEvent",

  "name": "Julius Caesar at Shakespeare's Globe",

  "location": {

    "@type": "PerformingArtsTheater",

    "name": "Shakespeare's Globe",

    "sameAs": "http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/",

    "address": "London, UK"

  },

  "offers": {

    "@type": "Offer",

    "url": "/examples/ticket/0012301230123"

  },

  "startDate": "2014-10-01T19:30",

  "workPerformed": {

    "@type": "CreativeWork",

    "name": "Julius Caesar",

    "sameAs": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar_(play)",

    "creator": {

      "@type": "Person",

      "name": "William Shakespeare",

      "sameAs": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare"

    }

  }

}

</script>

Markup example: sports, comedy, and festivals

These examples show typical markup for sports events, comedy performances, and music festivals. All examples are shown in JSON-LD syntax. Alternatively, you can mark up your content in Microdata or RDFa syntax if you prefer.

SPORTS EVENT COMEDY EVENTS MUSIC FESTIVAL


<script type="application/ld+json">

{

  "@context": "http://schema.org/",

  "@type": "SportsEvent",

  "name": "Orioles at Red Sox",

  "startDate": "2014-09-10T13:35-0400",

  "location": {

    "@type": "StadiumOrArena",

    "name": "Fenway Park",

    "address": "4 Yawkey Way, Boston, MA 02215, United States",

    "sameAs": "http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/bos/ballpark/"

  },

  "awayTeam": {

    "@type": "SportsTeam",

    "name": "Baltimore Orioles",

    "sameAs": "http://baltimore.orioles.mlb.com/"

  },

  "homeTeam": {

    "@type": "SportsTeam",

    "name": "Boston Red Sox",

    "sameAs": "http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/"

  },

  "offers": {

    "@type": "Offer",

    "category": "primary",

    "url": "http://purchase.tickets.com/buy/MLBEventInfo?pid=7637107"

  }

}

</script>

FAQ for Venue Events Markup

My site's event listings are spread over multiple web pages. How should I mark it up?

It is fine to include markup on multiple pages of events; Google will collect event details from all the pages it indexes on your site. If using Data Highlighter, you can tag each page individually, or if there are many pages all formatted the same way, use the "Tag this page and others like it" option documented here.

Google is not showing a Knowledge panel for my venue. What can I do?

Knowledge Graph panel triggering is governed by a complex algorithm, but helpful steps you can take are to make sure that the venue is in both Wikipedia and Google My Business, and that the venue's official home page is recorded properly on both those sites.

It will take months to schedule the implementation of markup on my site. How can I make my site eligible for Google Events features in the meantime?

Yes, if you can't add schema.org markup, you can't use a supported CMS plugin or widget, and you can't rely on a primary ticketer to mark up all your venue's events, then you still have another option: Data Highlighter. Data Highlighter lets you "teach" Google to understand the pattern of your event listings without changing your HTML code at all. For this to work, your event listings must be formatted in a regular pattern — for example, in a table or list with each field shown consistently for each event, rather than in free-form text.

Data Highlighter is part of Google Webmaster Tools, so the first step is to get yourself verified to use those tools. Once you're verified, follow these step-by-step instructions to highlight and tag each key field of each event on your event listing page. When you're finished, Google will remember the pattern so that each time it crawls your site, it will understand any newly added or modified events. Note that if your site later undergoes a formatting change, you'll have to go back to Data Highlighter to teach it the new pattern. Also note that, unlike with Options 1 and 2, this option does not make your structured data available to other search engines. We recommend markup as a long-term solution for all authoritative event websites.

Google shows a Knowledge panel for my venue, but with no upcoming events. How do I troubleshoot this?

First, check that the events are shown correctly with no errors in the Structured Data Dashboard for the performer or venue's official website, as described above. If all fields look correct, report the missing events using the "Report feedback" link under the Knowledge Graph panel in Google search. Please report it via "Report something else" ... "Send general feedback", and be sure to use the term "events" in your description of the problem.

I use a plug-in or widget to list events on my site, but it's not on the list of supported widgets. What should I do?

Please forward this document to the author of the plug-in or widget and ask them to add markup!

Will Google recognize event markup in dynamically generated (e.g. AJAX) web pages?

JSON-LD markup inserted by Javascript that runs upon initial page load can be recognized. Other forms of markup in dynamic content are not supported.

Event Markup: Official Performer Sites

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:33:00 +0000

Google shows upcoming event listings for performers, like musical artists and comedians, to millions of users each day in Google products. With your events displayed on Google, your fans can easily see event details and learn where to buy tickets. To be eligible for these features and to ensure that Google has the right data, provide up-to-date event schedules in structured data markup on your official website. This document describes how.

For a 10-minute video tutorial on how Google uses event markup, please see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXw8g-FbemI

Providing event data on performer sites

Google’s new approach to organizing event data depends on finding complete event information on each performer’s official website. Human-readable event listings are not sufficient; instead, the performer’s website must include structured data about each upcoming event. There are three ways to provide this structured data:

Add HTML markup directly to the event listings. This is a good option if you have a custom event platform, want full control over all fields, and don’t mind a little coding.
Use a markup-compatible events plugin or widget. This is an easy, reliable option if your events listing is powered by one of the supported platforms listed under Option 2 below.
(New) Use "delegation markup" to instruct Google to get your event listings from a page on another website.

Option 1: Add HTML Event Markup Directly

For websites whose HTML templates can be edited directly, the best approach is to add structured markup code to a page on the website that lists events. The page could be either the website’s home page; a page linked from the home page (e.g., my-artist.com/tour); or individual “event details” pages for each event. If your event listings are spread over multiple pages, add markup to each page individually. Google will collect event details from all the pages it indexes on your site.

Option 2: Use a Markup-Compatible Events Plugin or Widget

Some band-oriented event management platforms have built-in support for adding structured data markup to the event listings they generate. If your site uses one of the following platforms, Google should understand your events automatically:

GigPress plugin for WordPress — version 2.3.3 or later
Ohanah plugin for Joomla — version 2.0 or later
Songkick Concerts and Festivals plugin for WordPress — version 0.93 or later
Bandzoogle website platform
Digital agency platforms from Sparkart and BubbleUp

Similarly, if your website shows its event listings by embedding the "widget" of an events database service, Google should be able to read your events from that widget. Google supports the following widgets:

Option 3: Delegate Your Event Listings to Another Website

What if you can’t add markup or an event widget to your official website — for example, if your website doesn’t list your events at all? A new option is delegation markup: a way to specify that your events should be sourced from another web page of your choice. Just add markup like this, customizing the three bolded values, to your home page:

    <script type="application/ld+json">
    {"@context" : "http://schema.org",
     "@type" : "MusicGroup",
     "name" : "Your Band or Performer Name",
     "url" : "http://your-official-website.com",
     "event" : "http://other-event-site.com/your-event-listing-page/"
    }
    </script>

Google will follow the “event” URL provided to find your events. For those events to be usable, the following conditions must be met:

The target page must be accessible to the Googlebot (not blocked by robots.txt).
The target page must contain structured data items of type schema.org/Event (or its subtypes, like schema.org/MusicEvent).
Each of those Event items must specify a performer property corresponding to the performer.

Examples of URLs that may be specified as targets of the “event” property include:

http://www.bandsintown.com/Artist_Name
https://www.bandpage.com/Artist_Name
http://www.songkick.com/artists/###-Artist_name
http://www.ticketmaster.com/Artist-Name-tickets/artist/#####

Note that attribution links for the events sourced from the delegate site will link to that site, not to your official site.

Markup specification

When implementing event markup directly, each event should be specified with the most specific applicable subtype of schema.org/Event. Popular subtypes include ComedyEvent, Festival, FoodEvent, MusicEvent, TheaterEvent, and SportsEvent. This helps search engines categorize your event, and in some cases lets you specify extra fields relevant to that type of event, such as the "homeTeam" and "awayTeam" for a SportsEvent, or the "workPerformed" for a TheaterEvent.

The following table indicates the full set of event fields Google uses from performer official websites:

Property	Type	Description
`name` (required)	Text	The title of the event.
`image`	URL	URL of an image or logo for the event or tour
`url`	URL	URL of a page providing details about the event.
`startDate` (required)	Date	The start date and time of the event, in ISO-8601 format.
`doorTime`	DateTime	The time admission commences, in ISO-8601 format.
`endDate`	Date	The end date and time of the event, in ISO-8601 format.
`eventStatus`	EventStatusType	The event's cancellation status, if applicable. Must be one of the example values at right.
`previousStartDate`	Date	The previously scheduled date (only if eventStatus is set).
`typicalAgeRange`	Text	The expected age range.
`location` (required)	Place	A nested schema.org/Place (or more specific subtype, such as schema.org/EventVenue or schema.org/PerformingArtsTheater).
location.`name` (required)	Text	The venue name.
location.`sameAs`	URL	The URL of the venue's official website.
location.`address` (required)	PostalAddress	The venue's address. You may either provide the whole address as a single string, or provide the separate fields of the address in a nested schema.org/PostalAddress.
location.address.`streetAddress`		The street address.
location.address.`addressLocality`		The locality or city.
location.address.`addressRegion`		The region or state.
location.address.`postalCode`		The postal code.
location.address.`addressCountry`		The country code.
`offers`	Offer	A nested schema.org/Offer, one for each ticket type.
offers.`url` (recommended)		The URL of a page providing the ability to buy tickets. This URL must: direct to a landing page which clearly and predominantly provides, to any user from the general public, the opportunity to buy a ticket offering admittance to that specific event, as well as schema.org/Event markup with offer details be a link that is also present as a clickable link on the web page containing the data (i.e., not only in the markup) be followable by the Googlebot, i.e., not blocked by robots.txt
offers.`name` [*]		A user-visible name for the ticket type.
offers.`category` [*]		Google recognizes the following values in this field: primary: tickets available to the general public directly from the official representative of the event organizer or venue secondary: tickets made available for resale after direct purchase presale: tickets available early only to a subset of the public premium: tickets with special benefits in addition to admission Note: offers marked 'primary' will be given precedence in search contexts.
offers.`price` [*]		The lowest available price, including service charges and fees, of this type of ticket.
offers.`priceCurrency` [*]		The 3-letter currency code (unless included in price value).
offers.`availability` [*]		The availability status of tickets.
offers.`validFrom` [*]		The ISO-8601 date and time when tickets go on sale (only required on date-restricted offers).
offers.`validThrough` [*]		The ISO-8601 date and time when tickets go off sale (only required on date-restricted offers).
`performer`	Person	A nested schema.org/PerformingGroup or schema.org/Person, one for each performer.
performer.`name`		The performer's name.
performer.`sameAs`		The URL of the performer's official website or Wikipedia page.
`workPerformed`	CreativeWork	A nested schema.org/CreativeWork, used to represent each play, dance, or classical music piece being performed at the event (if applicable).
workPerformed.`name`		The name of the creative work being performed.
workPerformed.`sameAs`		The URL of the work's Wikipedia page or other reference page.
`awayTeam` `homeTeam`	SportsTeam	(Pending schema.org proposal for SportsEvent only, where applicable.)
homeTeam.`name` awayTeam.`name`		The name of the team.
homeTeam.`sameAs` awayTeam.`sameAs`		The URL of the team's official website or Wikipedia page.

[*] Note: If your website doesn't perform ticketing on-site, you only need to mark up the url field of each offer. Google will follow that url to a ticketer website and retrieve the other Offer details from that site. If your website does perform ticketing, it should mark up all Offer properties listed.

Markup example: concert information

The following examples show how to mark up concert event information. All examples are shown in JSON-LD syntax, which we recommend. Alternatively, you can mark up your events in microdata or RDFa syntax if you prefer.

Concert: simple version -- Basic markup for two concerts.
Concert: expanded/ticketer version -- A more fully specified concert event, including a tour image, full venue address, multiple performers, and multiple ticket classes. In general, the more fields specified, the more information about the event Google can present to Google users.
Classical music concert -- In this example, the performer and workPerformed properties are provided. In the future this will enable Google to show this event on a variety of user searches: "Chicago Symphony Center", "Chicago Symphony Orchestra", and even "Shostakovich Symphony #7".
Comedy events -- Basic markup for two comedy shows.

CONCERT: SIMPLE VERSION CONCERT: CLASSICAL MUSIC FEATURES COMEDY EVENT

<script type="application/ld+json">
[{
  "@context" : "http://schema.org",
  "@type" : "MusicEvent",
  "name" : "B.B. King",
  "startDate" : "2014-04-12T19:30",
  "location" : { 
     "@type" : "Place",
     "name" : "Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel",
     "address" : "79 Washington St., Providence, RI"
  },
  "offers" : {
     "@type" : "Offer",
     "url" : "https://www.etix.com/ticket/1771656"
  }
},
{
  "@context" : "http://schema.org",
  "@type" : "MusicEvent",
  "name" : "B.B. King",
  "startDate" : "2014-04-13T20:00",
  "location" : { 
     "@type" : "Place",
     "name" : "Lynn Auditorium",
     "address" : "Lynn, MA, 01901"
  },
  "offers" : {
     "@type" : "Offer",
 "url" : "http://frontgatetickets.com/venue.php?id=11766"
  }
}]
</script>

FAQ for Performer Events Markup

My site's event listings are spread over multiple web pages. How should I mark it up?

Google is not showing a Knowledge Graph panel for my performer. What can I do?

Knowledge Graph panel triggering is governed by a complex algorithm, but helpful steps you can take are to make sure that the artist is in both Wikipedia and MusicBrainz, and that the artist's official home page is recorded properly on both those sites.

It will take months to schedule the implementation of markup on my site. How can I make my site eligible for Google Events features in the meantime?

If you can't add schema.org markup and you can't use a supported CMS plugin or widget, then you still have two other options: Delegated Markup, as described above, and Data Highlighter. Data Highlighter lets you "teach" Google to understand the pattern of your event listings without changing your HTML code at all. For this to work, your event listings must be formatted in a regular pattern — for example, in a table or list with each field shown consistently for each event, rather than in free-form text.

Data Highlighter is part of Google Webmaster Tools, so the first step is to get yourself verified to use those tools. Once you're verified, follow these step-by-step instructions to highlight and tag each key field of each event on your event listing page. When you're finished, Google will remember the pattern so that each time it crawls your site, it will understand any newly added or modified events. Note that if your site later undergoes a formatting change, you'll have to go back to Data Highlighter to teach it the new pattern. Also note that, unlike markup-based options, this option does not make your structured data available to other search engines. We recommend markup as a long-term solution for all authoritative event websites.

Google shows a Knowledge panel for my performer, but with no upcoming events. How do I troubleshoot this?

First, check that the events are shown correctly with no errors in the Structured Data Dashboard for the performer or venue's official website, as described above. If all fields look correct, report the missing events using the "Report feedback" link under the Knowledge Graph panel in Google search. Please report it as "general feedback" and be sure to use the term "events" in your description of the problem.

I use a plug-in or widget to list events on my site, but it's not on the list of supported widgets. What should I do?

Please forward this document to the author of the plug-in or widget and ask them to add markup!

Will Google recognize event markup in dynamically generated (e.g. AJAX) web pages?

Yes, JSON-LD markup inserted by Javascript that runs upon initial page load can be recognized.

Specify Your Social Profiles To Google

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:29:00 +0000

Include your social profile in search results

Use markup on your official website to add your social profile information to the Google Knowledge panel in some searches. Knowledge panels can prominently display your social profile information.

Get started quickly with these instructions for formatting and publishing the proper markup code.

Social Profiles

Use structured data markup embedded in your public website to specify your preferred social profiles. You can specify these types of social profiles:

Facebook
Twitter
Google+
Instagram
YouTube
LinkedIn
Myspace
Pinterest
SoundCloud
Tumblr

We encourage you to specify other social profiles as well, but they aren't currently included in Google search results.

Google algorithms process the social profiles you specify and then display the most relevant ones in response to users' queries. (For sites that have a verification process, Google will only show verified profiles.) The social profiles in your markup must correspond to the ones that users can see on the same page.

Adding structured markup to your site

The schema.org vocabulary and JSON-LD markup format are an open standard for embedding structured data in web pages. In order for Google to recognize structured data as social profiles, make sure you fulfill these requirements:

Publish markup on a page on your official website
Pages with markup must not be blocked to the Googlebot by robots.txt
Include a Person or Organization record in your markup with:
- "url" = the url of your official website
- "sameAs" = the urls of your official social media profile pages

Here is a basic JSON-LD template for an organization to specify several social profiles:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{ "@context" : "http://schema.org",
  "@type" : "Organization",
  "name" : "Your Organization Name",
  "url" : "http://www.your-site.com",
  "sameAs" : [ "http://www.facebook.com/your-profile",
    "http://www.twitter.com/yourProfile",
    "http://plus.google.com/your_profile"] }
</script>

Here is a similar template for a person to specify their social profiles:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{ "@context" : "http://schema.org",
  "@type" : "Person",
  "name" : "your name",
  "url" : "http://www.your-site.com",
  "sameAs" : [ "http://www.facebook.com/your-profile",
      "http://instagram.com/yourProfile",
      "http://www.linkedin.com/in/yourprofile",
      "http://plus.google.com/your_profile"] }
</script>

You can simply replace the url and social profiles with your own values, and insert this code into the page that shows users these profiles. If the profiles visible on the page are formatted differently from the markup, that's okay.

The SCRIPT block can be inserted anywhere on the page — either the head or body of the page.

<span itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization">
  <link itemprop="url" href="http://www.your-company-site.com"> 
  <a itemprop="sameAs" href="http://www.facebook.com/your-company">FB</a>
  <a itemprop="sameAs" href="http://www.twitter.com/YourCompany">Twitter</a>
</span>

Testing and Publishing Your Markup

The block of structured data you produce, enclosed within the <script type="application/ld+json"> ... tags, can be inserted into any HTML page on your company's official website that is crawled and indexed by Google. Within the page, it may be placed in either the or region. Either way, it won't affect how your document appears in users' web browsers.

To verify that your markup is well-formed and can be processed by Google, paste the HTML source of your marked-up page (or just the <script> block) into Google's Structured Data Testing Tool.

When Google next crawls the page, its indexing algorithms will process the profiles from your markup and make them eligible to be used in search results. You can ask Google to crawl the page by following the instructionshere. Please note that this process may take up to a week.

Troubleshooting

My social media profile isn't displaying

The Google Knowledge Graph panel doesn't display your social media profile, even though you've added the markup to your official website.

First, check that the social profile information is shown correctly with no errors in the Markup Tester tool, as described above. Also check to see if your profiles are verified - Google does not show unverified profiles (for social profiles sites that allow verification). If all looks correct, and you have waited at least one week since your marked-up page was last crawled by Google, report the missing events using the small "Feedback" link under the Knowledge Graph panel in Google search. Click "Wrong?" on your company's name and explain the problem, being sure to use the term "social profiles" in your description of the problem.

I don't want my social media profile displayed

Google has a social profile displayed for for you or your company, but you don't want it to appear.

Even if you don't include this markup on your page, Google algorithms may find information that is publicly available on the web. You can use this markup to override the information Google finds automatically, but you can't specify not to list a social profile.

Corporate Contacts

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:23:00 +0000

Use corporate contact markup on your official website to add your company's contact information to the Google Knowledge panel in some searches. Knowledge panels can prominently display your customer service phone number.

Get started quickly with these instructions for formatting and publishing the proper markup code if your company has service phone numbers that are national or global in scope.

Company phone numbers

Use structured data markup embedded in your public website to specify your preferred phone numbers. You can specify the following types of phone numbers:

customer service
technical support
billing support
bill payment
sales
reservations
credit card support
emergency
baggage tracking
roadside assistance
package tracking

You can specify more categories of contact numbers than these, but they aren’t currently included in Google search results. For each number, you can also specify:

is the number toll-free?
is the number for the hearing-impaired?
does the number serve a specific country or countries?

Google algorithms will process all the phone numbers you specify and attempt to show the most relevant one in response to users’ queries. The phone numbers you include in your markup must correspond to phone numbers that users can see on the same page.

Adding structured markup to your site

The Schema.org vocabulary and JSON-LD markup format are an open standard for embedding structured data in web pages. In order for Google to recognize structured data as company contact numbers, make sure you fulfill these requirements:

Publish markup on a page on your company’s official website
Pages with markup must not be blocked from crawling by robots.txt directives
Include an Organization record in your markup that includes both:
- Your organization's official URL
- One or more ContactPoint records

Google recommends that you use JSON-LD markup. However, you can also use microdata or RDFa markup formats instead, as long as you still use the correct Schema.org types.

The Organization record is specified first. The only required properties on the Organization are url, which must be the home page of the company’s official site, and contactPoint. The value of contactPoint must be a list of nested ContactPoint records. Google considers these properties on each ContactPoint:

Property	Value specification	Example values
@type	Required to be "ContactPoint".	"ContactPoint"
telephone	Required. An internationalized version of the phone number, starting with the “+” symbol and country code (+1 in the US and Canada).	"+1-800-555-1212" "+44-2078225951"
contactType	Required to be one of the values listed at right. These values are not case sensitive. (Additional contact types may be supported later.)	"customer support" "technical support" "billing support" "bill payment" "sales" "reservations" "credit card support" "emergency" "baggage tracking" "roadside assistance" "package tracking"
areaServed	Optional. The geographical region served by the number, specified as a Schema.org/AdministrativeArea. Countries may be specified concisely using just their standard ISO-3166 two-letter code, as in the examples at right. If omitted, the number is assumed to be global.	"US" "GB" ["US","CA","MX"]
contactOption	Optional details about the phone number. Currently only the two values shown at right are supported.	"TollFree" "HearingImpairedSupported"
availableLanguage	Optional details about the language spoken. Languages may be specified by their common English name. If omitted, the language defaults to English.	"English" "Spanish" ["French", "English"]

Here is a basic template for specifying one customer service phone number:


<script type="application/ld+json">

{ "@context" : "http://schema.org",

  "@type" : "Organization",

  "url" : "http://www.your-company-site.com",

  "contactPoint" : [

    { "@type" : "ContactPoint",

      "telephone" : "+1-401-555-1212",

      "contactType" : "customer service"

    } ] }

</script>

You can simply customize the values with your company’s URL and customer service phone number, and insert this code into the page that shows users this phone number. If the number visible on the page is formatted differently from the markup (e.g., without a country code), that's okay.

Here is a more extensive example that illustrates multiple contact numbers for a company, including US toll-free numbers, a hearing-impaired number, and several contact categories:


<script type="application/ld+json">

{ "@context" : "http://schema.org",

  "@type" : "Organization",

  "url" : "http://www.t-mobile.com",

  "contactPoint" : [

    { "@type" : "ContactPoint",

      "telephone" : "+1-877-746-0909",

      "contactType" : "customer service",

      "contactOption" : "TollFree",

      "areaServed" : "US"

    } , {

      "@type" : "ContactPoint",

      "telephone" : "+1-505-998-3793",

      "contactType" : "customer service"

    } , {

      "@type" : "ContactPoint",

      "telephone" : "+1-877-296-1018",

      "contactType" : "customer service",

      "contactOption" : ["HearingImpairedSupported","TollFree"] ,

      "areaServed" : "US"

    } , {

      "@type" : "ContactPoint",

      "telephone" : "+1-877-453-1304",

      "contactType" : "technical support",

      "contactOption" : "TollFree",

      "areaServed" : ["US","CA"],

      "availableLanguage" : ["English","French"]

    } , {

      "@type" : "ContactPoint",

      "telephone" : "+1-877-453-1304",

      "contactType" : "bill payment",

      "contactOption" : "TollFree",

      "areaServed" : ["US","CA"]

    } ] }

</script>

In the JSON syntax used here, curly braces group properties of an object; square braces list multiple values of a property. Be careful with commas — they go outside the quotation marks, following every value except the last one in every object or list (see example above). Missing or extra commas are a frequent source of JSON errors!

Testing and publishing your markup

The block of structured data you produce, enclosed within the <script type="application/ld+json"> ... </script> tags, can be inserted into any HTML page on your company’s official website that is crawled and indexed by Google. We recommend inserting it into your contacts page, for ease of maintenance as phone numbers change over time, but any other page (including your home page) is also acceptable. Within the page, it may be placed in either the <HEAD> or <BODY> region. Either way, it won’t affect how your document appears in users’ web browsers.

To verify that your markup is well-formed and can be processed by Google, you should paste the HTML source of your marked-up page (or just the <script> block) into Google’s Corporate Contacts Markup Tester tool. If the tool reports “No structured data present,” then you likely have a syntax error such as a spurious comma. Otherwise, if the tool reports that any required fields are missing, please repair the data and try again.

When Google next crawls the page, its indexing algorithms will process the phone numbers from your markup and make them eligible to be used in search results. You can ask Google to crawl the page by following the instructions here. Please note that this process may take up to a week.

You can also use this technique to specify other data about your company to Google. For example, you can specify your company's official logo image as described in this Google blog post. Using the JSON-LD format, an example of markup to specify both a customer service number and an official logo image would be as follows:


<script type="application/ld+json">

{ "@context" : "http://schema.org",

  "@type" : "Organization",

  "url" : "http://www.your-company-site.com",

  "logo" : "http://www.example.com/logo.png",

  "contactPoint" : [

    { "@type" : "ContactPoint",

      "telephone" : "+1-401-555-1212",

      "contactType" : "customer service"

    } ] }

</script>

Troubleshooting

My corporate contact isn't displaying

The Google Knowledge Graph panel doesn’t display phone numbers for your company, even though you’ve added the markup to the company's official website.

First, check that the contact information is shown correctly with no errors in the Markup Tester tool, as described above. If all fields look correct, and you have waited at least one week since your marked-up page was last crawled by Google, report the missing events using the small “Feedback” link under the Knowledge Graph panel in Google search. Click “Wrong?” on the name of the company and explain the problem, being sure to use the term "contact information" in your description of the problem.

I don't want my corporate contact displayed

Google has a number displayed for my company, but I don’t want it listed.

Even if you don’t include this markup on your page, Google algorithms may find information that is publicly available on the web. You can use this markup to override the information Google finds automatically, but you can’t specify not to list a contact number.

Specifying Your Organization's Logo

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:20:00 +0000

You can specify which image Google should use as your organization's logo in search results and the Knowledge Graph.

To do this, add schema.org Organization markup to your official website that identifies the location of your preferred logo.

For example, a business whose homepage is www.example.com might add the following markup using visible on-page elements on their homepage:


    <script type="application/ld+json">

    {

      "@context": "http://schema.org",

      "@type": "Organization",

      "url": "http://www.example.com",

      "logo": "http://www.example.com/images/logo.png"

    }

    </script>

This example indicates to Google that this image is designated as the organization’s logo and, where possible, may be used in Google search results. Markup like this is a strong signal to our algorithms to show this image in Knowledge Graph displays.

Webmaster Guidelines

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:14:00 +0000

Best practices to help Google find, crawl, and index your site

Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site. Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the "Quality Guidelines," which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise impacted by an algorithmic or manual spam action. If a site has been affected by a spam action, it may no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google's partner sites.

When your site is ready:

Submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/.
Submit a Sitemap using Google Search Console. Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages.
Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online.

Design and content guidelines

Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map has an extremely large number of links, you may want to break the site map into multiple pages.
Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number.
Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images. If you must use images for textual content, consider using the ALT attribute to include a few words of descriptive text.
Make sure that your <title> elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.
Check for broken links and correct HTML.
If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.
Review our recommended best practices for images, video and rich snippets.

Technical guidelines

To help Google fully understand your site's contents, allow all of your site's assets, such as CSS and JavaScript files, to be crawled. The Google indexing system renders webpages using the HTML of a page as well as its assets such as images, CSS, and Javascript files. To see the page assets that Googlebot cannot crawl and to debug directives in your robots.txt file, use the Fetch as Google and the robots.txt Tester tools in Search Console
Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. These techniques are useful for tracking individual user behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely different. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site, as bots may not be able to eliminate URLs that look different but actually point to the same page.
Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since we last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.
Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. Visithttp://code.google.com/web/controlcrawlindex/docs/faq.html to learn how to instruct robots when they visit your site. You can test your robots.txt file to make sure you're using it correctly with the robots.txt analysis tool available in Google Search Console.
Make reasonable efforts to ensure that advertisements do not affect search engine rankings. For example, Google's AdSense ads and DoubleClick links are blocked from being crawled by a robots.txt file.
If your company buys a content management system, make sure that the system creates pages and links that search engines can crawl.
Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines.
Test your site to make sure that it appears correctly in different browsers.
Monitor your site's performance and optimize load times. Google's goal is to provide users with the most relevant results and a great user experience. Fast sites increase user satisfaction and improve the overall quality of the web (especially for those users with slow Internet connections), and we hope that as webmasters improve their sites, the overall speed of the web will improve.
Google strongly recommends that all webmasters regularly monitor site performance using Page Speed, YSlow,WebPagetest, or other tools. For more information, tools, and resources, see Let's Make The Web Faster.

Quality guidelines

These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here. It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.

If you believe that another site is abusing Google's quality guidelines, please let us know by filing a spam report. Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. While we may not take manual action in response to every report, spam reports are prioritized based on user impact, and in some cases may lead to complete removal of a spammy site from Google's search results. Not all manual actions result in removal, however. Even in cases where we take action on a reported site, the effects of these actions may not be obvious.

Quality guidelines - basic principles

Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.
Don't deceive your users.
Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you, or to a Google employee. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field.

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

Avoid the following techniques:

Automatically generated content
Participating in link schemes
Creating pages with little or no original content
Cloaking
Sneaky redirects
Hidden text or links
Doorway pages
Scraped content
Participating in affiliate programs without adding sufficient value
Loading pages with irrelevant keywords
Creating pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware
Abusing rich snippets markup
Sending automated queries to Google

Engage in good practices like the following:

Monitoring your site for hacking and removing hacked content as soon as it appears
Preventing and removing user-generated spam on your site

If your site violates one or more of these guidelines, then Google may take manual action against it. Once you have remedied the problem, you can submit your site for reconsideration.

Use canonical URLs

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:10:00 +0000

Set a preferred URL for your content

This article describes how you can use canonical URLs to improve link and ranking signals for content available through multiple URL structures or via syndication.

In the world of content management and online shopping systems, it's common for the same content to be accessed through multiple URLs. With content syndication, it's also easy for content to be distributed to different URLs and domains entirely. For example:

The same product page has dynamic URLs as a result of user session and/or search preference.	`https://www.example.com/products?category=dresses&color=green https://example.com/dresses/cocktail?gclid=ABCD https://www.example.com/dresses/green/greendress.html`
Your blog system automatically saves multiple URLs as you position the same post under multiple sections.	`https://blog.example.com/dresses/green-dresses-are-awesome/ https://blog.example.com/green-things/green-dresses-are-awesome/`
Your server is configured to serve the same content for the www subdomain or the http protocol.	`http://example.com/green-dresses https://example.com/green-dresses http://www.example.com/green-dresses`
Content you provide on that blog forsyndication to other sites is replicated in part or in full on those domains.	`https://news.example.com/green-dresses-for-every-day-155672.html` (syndicated post) `https://blog.example.com/dresses/green-dresses-are-awesome/3245/` (original post)

While these systems make it more convenient to develop and distribute content, they cause some challenges when people use search engines to reach your page. For instance:

Consolidating link signals for the duplicate or similar content. It helps search engines to be able to consolidate the information they have for the individual URLs (such as links to them) on a single, preferred URL. This means that links from other sites to http://example.com/dresses/cocktail?gclid=ABCD get consolidated with links tohttps://www.example.com/dresses/green/greendress.html.
Tracking metrics for a single product/topic. With a variety of URLs, it's more challenging to get consolidated metrics for a specific piece of content.
Determining the URL you want people to see. You prefer people reach your green dresses product page via https://www.example.com/dresses/green/greendress.html rather thanhttps://example.com/dresses/cocktail?gclid=ABCD.
Addressing syndicated content. If you syndicate your content for publication on other domains, you want to consolidate page ranking to your preferred URL.

To address these issues, we recommend you define a canonical URL for content (or equivalent content) available through multiple URLs. You can do this for Google Search in a number of ways:

While we encourage you to use any of these methods, none of them are required. If you don't indicate a canonical URL, we'll identify what we think is the best version or URL.

Don't use the robots.txt file for canonicalization purposes.

Don't use the URL removal tool for canonicalization: it removes all versions of a URL from search.

Don't specify different URLs as canonical for the same page (e.g. one URL in a sitemap and a different URL for that same page using rel="canonical").

Set your preferred domain

Tell Google which version of your site's URL you prefer for your domain:

https://www.example.com
https://example.com

If you set your preferred domain as https://example.com, Google treats links to https://www.example.com exactly the same as links to https://example.com.

Read Set your preferred domain for details.

Indicate the preferred URL with the `rel="canonical"` link element

Suppose you want https://blog.example.com/dresses/green-dresses-are-awesome/ to be the preferred URL, even though a variety of URLs can access this content. You can indicate this to search engines as follows:

Mark up the canonical page and any other variants with a rel="canonical" link element.

Add a <link> element with the attribute rel="canonical" to the <head> section of these pages:
```
<link rel="canonical" href="https://blog.example.com/dresses/green-dresses-are-awesome" />
```
This indicates the preferred URL to use to access the green dress post, so that the search results will be more likely to show users that URL structure. (Note: We attempt to respect this, but cannot guarantee this in all cases.)

Avoid errors: use absolute paths rather than relative paths with the rel="canonical" link element.

Use this structure: https://www.example.com/dresses/green/greendresss.html

Not this structure: /dresses/green/greendress.html).

Use a sitemap to indicate preferred URLs for the same content

Pick a canonical (preferred) URL for each of your pages, and tell us about your preference by submitting these canonical URLs in a sitemap.

We don't guarantee that we'll use the URLs you submit in a sitemap, but submitting one is a useful way to tell Google about the pages on your site you consider most important.

Use 301 redirects for URLs that are not canonical

Suppose your page can be reached in multiple ways:

https://example.com/home
https://home.example.com
https://www.example.com

It's a good idea to pick one of those URLs as your preferred (canonical) destination, and use 301 redirects to send traffic from the other URLs to your preferred URL. A server-side 301 redirect is the best way to ensure that users and search engines are directed to the correct page. The 301 status code means that a page has permanently moved to a new location.

Indicate how to handle dynamic parameters

Use Parameter Handling to tell Google about any parameters you would like ignored. Ignoring certain parameters can reduce duplicate content in Google's index, and make your site more crawlable. For example, if you specify that the parameter sessionid should be ignored, Google will consider https://www.example.com/dresses/green.php?sessionid=273749 to be the same as https://www.example.com/dresses/green.php.

Specify a canonical link in your HTTP header

If you can configure your server, you can use rel="canonical" HTTP headers to indicate the canonical URL for HTML documents and other files such as PDFs. Say your site makes the same PDF available via different URLs (for example, for tracking purposes), like this:


https://www.example.com/downloads/white-paper.pdf

https://www.example.com/downloads/partner-1/white-paper.pdf
https://www.example.com/downloads/partner-2/white-paper.pdf

https://www.example.com/downloads/partner-3/white-paper.pdf

In this case, you can use a rel="canonical" HTTP header to specify to Google the canonical URL for the PDF file, as follows:

Link: <http://www.example.com/downloads/white-paper.pdf>; rel="canonical"

Google currently supports these link header elements for Web Search only.

Prefer HTTPS over HTTP for canonical URLs

Google prefers HTTPS pages over equivalent HTTP pages as canonical, except when there are conflicting signals such as the following:

The HTTPS page has an invalid SSL certificate.
The HTTPS page contains insecure dependencies.
The HTTPS page is roboted (and the HTTP page is not).
The HTTPS page redirects users to or through an HTTP page.
The HTTPS page has a rel="canonical" link to the HTTP page.
The HTTPS page contains a noindex robots meta tag

Although our systems prefer HTTPS pages over HTTP pages by default, you can ensure this behavior by taking any of the following actions:

Add 301 or 302 redirects from the HTTP page to the HTTPS page.
Add a rel="canonical" link from the HTTP page to the HTTPS page.
Implement HSTS.

To prevent Google from incorrectly making the HTTP page canonical, you should avoid the following practices:

Bad SSL certificates and HTTPS-to-HTTP redirects cause us to prefer HTTP very strongly. Implementing HSTS cannot override this strong preference.
Including the HTTP page in your sitemap or hreflang entries rather than the HTTPS version.
Implementing your SSL/TLS certificafe for the wrong host-variant: for example, example.com serving the certificate for www.example.com. The certificate must match your complete site URL, or be a wildcard certificate that can be used for multiple subdomains on a domain.

Enabling Rich Snippets for Software Apps

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:00:00 +0000

When you mark up software application information in the body of a web page, Google can identify it and, when users search for apps, use this information to better display your app details in search results.

Here's an example of a rich snippet for a mobile application:

Properties

An application can have a number of different properties which you can label using the following extension to theSchema.org vocabulary. For each app, you can include nested Things (information types supported by the schema.org vocabulary—for example, Review or Offer).

Properties in plural indicate that the markup can contain multiple instances for each properties (e.g. reviews or offers implies that more than one review or offer can be included in the markup).

The name property is required. In addition, rich snippets are currently only shown for software applications that provide at least two of the following:

aggregateRating (including ratingValue and either ratingCount or reviewCount)
offers (including price and currency)
operatingSystem
applicationCategory

Properties for all SoftwareApplication types

The following properties apply to all types of software applications:

Thing > CreativeWork > SoftwareApplication type and subtypes

Property	Type	Description
`name` (Required)	Text	The name of the app.
`aggregateRating`	AggregateRating	The aggregate rating of the app.
`offers`	Offer	An offer to sell the app. For developers, Offer can indicate the marketplaces that carry the application. For marketplaces, use to indicate the price of the application for a specific app instance.
`operatingSystem`	Text	Operating systems required (for example, "Windows 7", "OSX 10.6", "Android 1.6")
`applicationCategory`	Text or URL	The type of software application (for example, BusinessApplication or GameApplication). Must be one of the supported software application types.

Extended properties for app subtypes

For mobile applications and web applications, Google also supports the following property extensions:

Thing > CreativeWork > SoftwareApplication > MobileApplication
Thing > CreativeWork > SoftwareApplication > WebApplication

Marking up code

The following HTML code identifies a mobile software app and lists several of its features.

JSON-LD MICRODATA RDFA


<script type="application/ld+json">

{

  "@context": "http://schema.org/",

  "@type": "SoftwareApplication",

  "name": "Angry Birds",

  "operatingSystem": "ANDROID",

  "applicationCategory": "http://schema.org/GameApplication",

  "aggregateRating":{

    "@type": "AggregateRating",

    "ratingValue": "4.6",

    "ratingCount": "8864"

  },

  "offers":{

    "@type": "Offer",

    "price": "1.00",

    "priceCurrency": "USD"

  }

}

</script>

Here's how this sample works:

Each listed app is enclosed in a <div>, like this: <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/SoftwareApplication">. itemscope indicates that the HTML enclosed in the <div> is an item, and itemtype="http://schema.org/SoftwareApplication" indicates that the item is a mobile software app.
Each <div> describes properties of the app, such as its name, and required operating system. To label app properties, each element containing one of these properties, such as <div> or <span> is assigned an itemprop attribute. For example, <span itemprop="name">Angry Birds</span>.
The app includes nested Review and Offer information.

Enabling Rich Snippets for Events

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 07:55:00 +0000

Event Rich Snippets add one or more lines with structured details of upcoming events below your search result, like this:

Basic markup properties

Property	Type	Description
`name` (required)	Text	The name of the event. This is shown in the rich snippet. See specific policies about event names below.
`url` (required*)	URL	A link to the event's details page. * Required if the event's details are on a different page. If the event is described on the page you are marking up, there is no need to mark up the url property.
`location` (required)	Place or PostalAddress	The location or venue of the event. A text string is permitted, but we recommend that you represent the location by using a nested Place or Organization to separately specify a venue name and its address.
`startDate` (required)	Date	The starting date and time of the event. See important information about the requirement for ISO 8601 date format.
`offers` (optional)	Offer	An offer to buy tickets for this event. If present, some subfields are required.
offers.`price` (required)	Number	The lowest available price, including service charges and fees, of this type of ticket.
offers.`priceCurrency`(required)	Text	The 3-letter currency code.

Example Event markup for rich snippets

The following example describes some basic information about a music concert, including the name, date and time, location, and URL for more information.

You can use the Structured Data Testing Tool to check that your markup is correct.


<script type="application/ld+json">

{

  "@context": "http://schema.org",

  "@type": "Event",

  "name": "Example Band goes to San Francisco",

  "startDate" : "2013-09-14T21:30",

  "url" : "http://example.com/tourdates.html",

  "location" : {

    "@type" : "Place",

    "sameAs" : "http://www.hi-dive.com",

    "name" : "The Hi-Dive",

    "address" : "7 S. Broadway, Denver, CO 80209"

  }

}

</script>

Event-specific usage guidelines and policies

In addition to the general policies that apply to all rich snippets, the following extra policies apply for Event rich snippets:

Events in the past will not be shown as a rich snippet. Leaving them marked up is still recommended.
Since Event rich snippets are not meant for advertising purposes, your event name should not contain any promotional elements such as the price of the event, a call to purchase, or an indication of a sale or temporary discount. For sales events, use the equivalent markup but using schema.org/SaleEvent. Invalid event names:
- Trip package: San Diego/LA, 7 nights (Don't use rich snippets markup to promote non-event products or services.)
- Music festival - only $10! (Instead, mark up ticket prices using the tickets property.)
- Sale on dresses! (Non-event information)
- Concert - buy your tickets now! (Promotion)
- Concert - 50% off until Saturday! (Promotion)

Enabling Rich Snippets for Reviews and Ratings

noreply@blogger.com (Dheeraj Bhagat) — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 07:42:00 +0000

Reviews and ratings are two ways to express an evaluation about a range of items. A review is the evaluation described as text, and a rating is an evaluation described on a numeric scale (such as 1 to 5). A rating can be marked marked up in conjunction with, and as part of, a textual review.

We support reviews and ratings for a wide range of schema.org types, including businesses, products, and different creative works such as books or movies. When Google finds valid reviews or ratings markup, we may show a rich snippet that includes stars and other summary info from reviews or ratings.

Reviews

A review is someone's evaluation of something. In addition to the text of the review, the markup can include a reviewRating, which expresses a summary of the review as a numeric value.

Review type definition

Property	Type	Description
`itemReviewed` (required*)	Thing	The item that is being reviewed. This needs to be a valid schema.org type. * If review is embedded into another schema.org type, using `review` property, then there is no need to mark up the itemReviewed property.
`reviewBody`	Text	The actual body of the review.
`author` (required)	Person orOrganization	The author of the review. The reviewer’s name needs to be a valid name.
`datePublished`	Date	The date that the review was published, in ISO 8601 date format.
`reviewRating`	Rating	The rating given in this review. A nested schema.org/Rating (or more specific subtype, most typically AggregateRating).
reviewRating.`ratingValue`	Number	A numerical quality rating for the item.
reviewRating.`bestRating`(required*)	Number	The highest value allowed in this rating system. * Required if the rating system is not on a 5-point scale. If bestRating is omitted, 5 is assumed.
reviewRating.`worstRating`(required*)	Number	The lowest value allowed in this rating system. * Required if the rating system is not on a 5-point scale. If worstRating is omitted, 1 is assumed.

Examples

Here we show a simple example of book review. Note that itemReviewed property is explicitly described using a schema.org type. Try to use the most specific type for your reviewed items.

JSON-LD MICRODATA RDFA


<script type="application/ld+json">

{

  "@context": "http://schema.org/",

  "@type": "Review",

  "itemReviewed":{

    "@type": "Book",

    "name": "The Catcher in the Rye",

    "sameAs": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catcher_in_the_Rye"

  },

  "reviewRating":{

    "@type": "Rating",

    "ratingValue": "4"

  },

  "name": "A good read.",

  "author":{

    "@type": "Person",

    "name": "Bob Smith"

  },

  "reviewBody": "Catcher in the Rye is a fun book. It's a good book to read."

}

</script>

Alternatively, you can embed a review into another schema.org type, using its review property.

JSON-LD MICRODATA RDFA


<script type="application/ld+json">

{

  "@context": "http://schema.org/",

  "@type": "Product",

  "image": "http://www.example.com/catcher-in-the-rye-book-cover.jpg",

  "name": "The Catcher in the Rye",

  "review":{

    "@type": "Review",

    "reviewRating":{

      "@type": "Rating",

      "ratingValue": "5"

    },

    "name": "A masterpiece of literature",

    "author":{

      "@type": "Person",

      "name": "John Doe"

    },

    "datePublished": "2006-05-04",

    "reviewBody": "I really enjoyed this book. It captures the essential challenge people face as they try make sense of their lives and grow to adulthood."

    }

}

</script>

Marking up a single rating as part of a review

Let's look at an example of a rating that is on a 10-point scale. In this case, the goal is to convey not only the actual rating, but the rating scale that it is based on.

JSON-LD MICRODATA RDFA


<script type="application/ld+json">

{

  "@context": "http://schema.org/",

  "@type": "Review",

  "itemReviewed":{

    "@type": "Book",

    "name": "Super Book"

  },

  "author":{

    "@type": "Person",

    "name": "Joe"

  },

  "reviewRating":{

    "@type": "Rating",

    "ratingValue": "7",

    "bestRating":   "10"

  }

}

</script>

Aggregate Ratings

An aggregate evaluation of an item by many people should be marked up as a schema.org/AggregateRating . The default rating scale is from 1 (worst) to 5 (best), but any scale can be used; see below for an example. Google may display aggregate ratings as rich snippets or, for certain types of items, answers in search results, as shown below.

AggregateRating type definition

Property	Type	Description
`itemReviewed`(required*)	Thing	The item that is being rated. This needs to be a valid schema.org type. * If aggregate rating is embedded into another schema.org type, using `aggregateRating` property, then there is no need to mark up the itemReviewed property.
`ratingCount`(required*)	Number	The total number of ratings for the item on your site. * At least one of `ratingCount` or`reviewCount` is required.
`reviewCount`(requierd*)	Number	Specifies the number of people who provided a review with or without an accompanying rating. At least one of `ratingCount` or `reviewCount` is required.
`ratingValue` (required)	Number	A numerical quality rating for the item.
`bestRating` (required*)	Number	The highest value allowed in this rating system. * Required if the rating system is not a 5-point scale. If bestRating is omitted, 5 is assumed.
`worstRating`(required*)	Number	The lowest value allowed in this rating system. * Required if the rating system is not a 5-point scale. If worstRating is omitted, 1 is assumed.

Ratings that don't use a 5-point scale

By default, Google assumes that your site uses a 5-point scale, where 5 is the best possible rating and 1 is the worst, but you can use any other scale. If you do, you can mark up the best and worst ratings, and Google will scale that to the 5-star system used in rich snippets. The 10-point scale used above does just this. For further examples see below.

Marking up an aggregate rating

For sites with aggregate ratings (the rating is based on the average of a collection of ratings rather than on a single rating or review), the process is similar to the single review case.

JSON-LD MICRODATA RDFA


<script type="application/ld+json">

{

  "@context": "http://schema.org/",

  "@type": "Book",

  "name": "Super Book",

  "description": "Ultra interesting. Super impressive.",

  "aggregateRating":{

    "@type": "AggregateRating",

    "ratingValue": "88",

    "bestRating": "100",

    "ratingCount": "20"

   }

}

</script>

Marking up an aggregate rating when there is no best score

This final example shows how to mark up aggregate rating information that isn't on a 5-point scale, when the best/worst possible ratings are not explicitly written on the page. The goal is to display not only the average rating, but also the scale that it's based on.

JSON-LD MICRODATA RDFA


<script type="application/ld+json">

{

  "@context": "http://schema.org/",

  "@type": "Book",

  "name": "Super Book",

  "description": "Ultra interesting. Super impressive.",

  "aggregateRating":{

    "@type": "AggregateRating",

    "ratingValue": "9",

    "bestRating": "10",

    "worstRating": "1",

    "ratingCount": "20"

   }

 }

 </script>

The content attribute in the meta tag allows you to provide information that isn't explicitly written on the page. Note that in general Google will not display content that isn't visible to the end user, but when the best and/or worst ratings aren't present on the page, using meta with bestRating or worstRating is allowed.

Review-specific usage guidelines and policies

To be eligible for reviews and ratings rich snippets, be aware of the following extra guidelines:

Make sure the review or ratings markup refers clearly to a specific product or service as shown in the examples above. Do this by nesting the review or ratings within the markup of another schema.org type — such as schema.org/Book or schema.org/LocalBusiness — or by using that schema.org typed element as a value for the itemReviewed property.
Make sure the reviews and ratings you mark up are readily available to users from the marked-up page. It should be immediately obvious to users that the page has review or ratings content.
Review and rating markup should be used to provide review and/or rating information about a specific item, not about a category or a list of items. For example, “hotels in Madrid”, “summer dresses”, or “cake recipes” are not specific items. See also our structured data policies for multiple entities on the same page.
We will not show review rich snippets for adult-related products or services.
If the markup contains a single review, the author's name needs to be a valid name. For example, "50% off until Saturday" is not a valid name for a reviewer.