Search engines crawling past events

Hi,

for preventing previous events from showing in search engines you can use the meta tag ‘noindex” when the event is past :
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en

I’m not sure this is a good solution for SEO.
Past events can sometimes be helpful to visitors.

I think the right solution is to use structured data :
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-structured-data
https://schema.org/Event

And display list of futures events with strured data on past events.
Google will show a link to the new event in the search results.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by leleuf.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by leleuf.

Thanks for the response.

I want to go the route of adding the meta tag ‘noindex’, but I can’t figure out how to add this in. To my understanding, meta tags have to be added into the head. If my events are loading on single-events.php, how would I add this in?

Also, I don’t see an easy way to determine if an event is past or not, except by comparing the current date with PHP to the date of the event. Is there any easier to determine that?

“Please be mindful with noindex directives and remember that most search engines will honour it, even if it’s in the BODY element.”
https://plus.google.com/+GaryIllyes/posts/ZPPrxASiXf3

noindex directives in the BODY element is not a good solution but is a solution if you do not know how to code.

{is_past}<meta name="robots" content="noindex">{/is_past}

Or Block URLs with robots.txt :
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062596?hl=en&ref_topic=6061961