Google sends searchers to last years’ event

  • I have a problem with popular recurring events. My site had over 1000 hits yesterday for last year’s July 4 parade event instead of the current event. I guess last year’s version got good google juice last year, so google figures it must be the July 4 parade that people are looking for. I’ve noted this in the past for Christmas events, and more recently for monthly events where April’s Food Truck mania got more hits in June than June’s Food Truck mania event.

    What is the best solution for getting google to find the most current version of an event? Unpublish the old ones? The past events can be useful plus manually doing that is a nuisance. Perhaps I can programatically add a “no follow” for events over x days old? Is there a simpler solution?

    Has anyone else encountered this?

    • This topic was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by webmystery.
Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Plugin Support angelo_nwl

    (@angelo_nwl)

    yes, you can try to set your events page to post under events > settings > pages > event pages > display events as =post and then create single-event.php in your theme directory and try this snippet (formats depends on your single.php)

    
<?php get_header(); ?>

<?php
			global $post;

			$EM_Event = em_get_event($post->ID, 'post_id');

		?>

  
<div class="container" style="padding-top:10px;">
    <div class="row-fluid"> 

    <div class="span8">
		

		
		<h1 class="single"><?php echo $EM_Event->output('#_EVENTNAME'); ?></h1>
		<div class="blockhead">                          
                              <p> 
                               
                                 <?php $startdate = $EM_Event->event_start_date;?>
                                 Datum : <?php echo $EM_Event->output('#_EVENTDATES');?>, <?php echo $EM_Event->output('#_EVENTTIMES');;?><br/>
                                 Locatie : <?php echo $EM_Event->location->location_name;?><br/>
                                 Adres : <?php echo $EM_Event->location->location_address;?>, <?php echo $EM_Event->location->location_town;?>
                              </p>
                </div>   

		<div class="entry">
		 <?php echo $EM_Event->post_content; ?>
		</div>

	</div>
	<div class="span4">
		<?php ###I want the_bookingform here!>

	</div>
</div>
</div>
<?php get_footer(); ?>
    Thread Starter webmystery

    (@webmystery)

    Thanks – I’m missing something – don’t see how this code will remove a past event from a google search.

    I think the best / safest option would be to unpublish the old events then publish the new ones at the same permalink. Bear in mind you’ll also need to remove the event from Trash after deleting to free up the permalink again.

    Thread Starter webmystery

    (@webmystery)

    I’m afraid you’re right but that’s going to be an administrative headache. This isn’t just a few recurring events. It can happen when the same band returns to the same venue 3, 6 months later. https://artvallejo.org

    An alternative might be to set up automatic deleting of past events. You’d need to write a script that did the deleting. along with a cron job to run it at regular intervals.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • The topic ‘Google sends searchers to last years’ event’ is closed to new replies.