With more and more people noticing Events being displayed in the Knowledge Panel (not always correctly) there is a rise in incorrect information being written that assumes Events and Exhibitions being displayed are equal.
Putting spam events aside there are subtle differences to Events and Exhibitions.
The Difference Between Events & Exhibitions
Although exhibitions fall within event types within schema they are not treated the same.
Events Displayed
- Event on site marked up with any Event Markup
- Can be pulled from 3rd party event sites including social events
- Event displayed on any business knowledge panel regardless of category (excludes hotels)
Between 2016 and 2018 Google did not scrape or use 3rd party event information to populate knowledge panels and structured data on linked domain was the only way to have events appear on site, please bring this back Google.
Exhibitions Displayed
- Exhibition on linked domain – not necessarily with structured data
- Event will only be displayed on business knowledge panel that are categories as Museums or Art Gallery
If a domain has exhibitions displayed Google is clever enough to extract and display without structured data as long as the displayed information contains the necessary information required to display as an exhibition.
No exhibition will be displayed within the knowledge panel if the businesses category is not marked as Museum or Art Gallery regardless of being on website or marked up with structured data.
Hope this clears things up for everyone.
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