Google expands events in Knowledge Graph to include ticket links, delegated listings, comedians, and venues

Google today released an update to its Knowledge Graph panel, the summary widget that appears next to search results, that benefits performers and their fans. Official ticket links and delegated event links can now be added by the artist, as can events specific to comedians and to venues.

The Knowledge Graph is Google’s project for mapping out the real world, be it physical objects, important landmarks, or famous people. It doesn’t power just web searches; mobile and voice searches tap into it, too.

In March 2014, Google started to let musical artists list their upcoming events on Google by incorporating schema.org markup into their official websites. Now artists can add markup for ticketing links as well.

This will result in an expanded answer card for the event in Google search, including the on-sale date, availability, and a direct link to the artist’s preferred ticketing site:

Delegated event links, meanwhile, allow you to add events to the Knowledge Graph using information from a page that isn’t your official website. This can be useful if your event information resides somewhere besides your official website, such as a festival site or event calendar. More details are on the Event Markup: Official Performer Sites support page.

In addition to musical artists, this feature now supports comedian events. You can add ComedyEvent markup to your official website or delegate the information from a comedy event listing site using delegation markup.

The same applies to venue event listings (concerts, theaters, libraries, and so on) — add the markup and they will show up in Google Search as well:

If your events are ticketed by a primary ticketer whose website provides markup, you don’t have to do anything more. Google says it will use the ticketer’s markup and apply it toward your venue’s event listings so they show up in the Knowledge Graph panel.

The following sites have already implemented ticketer events markup: Ticketmaster, TicketWeb, Ticketfly, AXS, LaughStub, Wantickets, Holdmyticket, ShowClix, Stranger Tickets, Ticket Alternative, Digitick, See Tickets, Tix, Fnac Spectacles, Ticketland.ru, iTickets, MIDWESTIX, Ticketleap, and Instantseats.

That is quite a lot of extra data that Google is starting to serve up to its users. Yet the best part is that anyone can play ball — even if you aren’t a major event holder. Of course, this means there is room for abuse, but that should be worth the trouble given how many people search for more information online before attending an event.