Last year, Google made some changes to the way that information about musicians appears in the Knowledge Graph. When users were known to have visited the artist’s official website recently, the knowledge graph would show information about concerts.
Now, Google is looking to improve the knowledge graph again. This time, they are adding an expanded answer card to the knowledge graph. This card will include ticket sales links as well as information about the on-sale date and ticket availability.
Currently, only a handful of bands have been added to the system. For ticketing information to appear in the knowledge graph, the artist needs to mark-up the ticketing links and event information on their website. Only when this is done will the ticket information appear, and since the feature is relatively new a lot of artists have not yet implemented it.
Google has provided a range of tools to help artists, and other business owners, take advantage of the knowledge graph. For example, artists can use the Google Webmaster Tools markup feature to highlight specific parts of their websites. Alternatively, they can install an event widget or they may mark up the HTML of their website directly, assuming they have the skills to do so.
Google allows webmasters to use a delegation markup that will source event information from a second page; this will be useful for artists who sell their tickets through a third party and who are unable to make extensive changes to the code of their primary website – for example if their primary website is simply a store page for the sale of their album or merchandise.
In addition to offering tools for musicians, there is a “ComedyEvent Markup” schema for comedians who wish to use the delegation markup and there are options for event locations to use event markup features to inform local concert goers about the events that are taking place at their venues. It may be worth other performers watching for updates to see if the types of shows that they put on get added to the markup.
Google’s knowledge graph is becoming increasingly sophisticated and it is able to provide direct answers to a lot of questions that searchers may have without the searchers needing to leave Google. This is particularly valuable for mobile users who may not want to have to wait through the slow loading times of traditional websites.
