Hi there,
When an event is built and goes live the webpage lives forever and the problem is a lot of potential patrons Google a performance/artist, etc. and find links that go to a past event on our website. After 8 years, 200 events per year, Google has spidered a lot of events, a lot we are bringing back. We then get contacted that they can't buy tickets. (They are not seeing the past date on the webpage) In a perfect world, past events should fall off Tess automatically and redirect to our homepage, but I realize that isn't part of the application, so, I was just wondering if anyone else is having this issue and any steps you did to approach it? Thanks in advance.
Have you tried setting the Web Publish Dates for the performances in question? You can do that quickly in Season Maintenance. I know it takes them off the calendar, but I assumed it would also prevent the event pages from rendering?
My other thought would be to make a point of including Web Content for past shows that calls out the fact that the page is historical, and gives a link to either the calendar or even a current event listing for the artist. Alternatively, the web content could be encoded to automatically redirect to those pages.
I have my web publish end date at midnight on the night of the event so each day we have a fresh listing of what is still coming up. I just tested some google searches on a past film event we had and nothing came up so I think that seems to work.
Thanks for your replies. Unfortunately, the web pub & MOS dates do not affect the external web direct links to the event pages online visibility, so search engine caching, old email blasts, artist and Facebook website links, and even those pesky ticket broker web pages can potentially directly link to a past event.