Google Adds Concert Listings to Search Results The world's most popular search engine has once again tweaked its results. This newest change is geared toward music lovers looking for live concert information on their favorite artists.
Quietly introduced yesterday, the new feature will show you upcoming concert information in your area for bands or artists you enter into Google's search engine. The information blurbs will include dates, venues, and links to sites offering tickets for sale.
"If the band isn't touring near you, the new results for concerts won't appear, but if the band happens to be coming to your town within the next few months, you can see the concert dates listed under the band's official website," Kavi Goel, a Google Search product manager, said in a blog post. "You can then click on the band's official site to learn more or click on other web pages to learn more about the event or to buy tickets."
The concert listings definitely seem like a convenient way to get updated information on music artists. But it also raises, once again, questions regarding Google's position in regards to content creators that already offer such information. Some news organizations are still grumbling about the news aggregation going on at news.google.com. Google also jumped into territory normally covered by sites like Yelp when it purchased food review site Zagat, and the search giant's acquisition of ITA gave the travel industry a collective heart attack.
As for how Google's new concert listings information is gathered, Goel said, "To find upcoming concert tour dates, we aggregate relevant data for events from multiple websitesÂ…" And for those sites listing events looking to have their information included in this new results category, Google advises that they add "rich snippets" to their website.
For now the feature will only be available to those searching within the English versions of Google, but the company plans to roll out the feature in other countries as well.
In other search news, meanwhile, Google this week also rolled out an update to related search links to make them more visual. "For example, when planning a trip to Greece, I may not know what places are worth a visit, so I search for greece on Image Search. Now, with more visual search links, I can hover over the links on the top of the results, like santorini greece, and see a panel pop up with images of Santorini," Google said in a blog post.
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