: Why can't Google handle rich snippets events with dates before 1970 Using Google's Rich Snippet Test Tool I couldn't get it to successfully recognize my event data (we have many sermons on our
Using Google's Rich Snippet Test Tool I couldn't get it to successfully recognize my event data (we have many sermons on our website dating back to 1947).
Finally, I got it to recognize it when using a more recent date, here is some test code that can be copied and pasted into the test tool:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML+RDFa 1.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/DTD/xhtml-rdfa-1.dtd">
<html xmlns:v="http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/#" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head><title>test</title></head>
<body>
<div typeof="v:Event">
<span property="v:eventType" content="Sermon">Prediking</span><br />
<p property="v:startDate" content="1957-09-08T00:00:00"><strong>Date</strong><br />08-09-1957</p>
<p><strong>Title</strong><br /><span property="V:summary">MyEvent</span></p>
<p rel="v:location"><strong>Location</strong><br /><span typeof="v:Organization"><span property="v:name">Town Hall</span> <span rel="v:address" typeof="v:Address"><span property="v:locality">Placeville</span>, <span property="v:region">AZ</span> </span></span></p>
</div></body></html>
Change the year from 1957 to 1970 and it will suddenly recognize it!
The error I'm receiving is a general one:
In order to generate a preview, the start date and summary are
required. Additionally, if the webpage contains a list of events, the
URL is required. Otherwise, if the webpage is about a single event,
the location is required. See the events help page for more
information.
Looks like a reverse "milennium" bug of some sort!
More posts by @LarsenBagley505
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As your test code contains some errors, I removed any unneeded data to make it a minimal example:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head><title>Google Structured Data Testing Tool: date bug?</title></head>
<body>
<div vocab="http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/#" typeof="Event">
<p property="startDate">1947-09-08</p>
<p property="summary">Something</p>
<p property="location">Somewhere</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
The Google Structured Data Testing Tool can handle "dates before 1970":
Those years don’t give any error:
1600
1700
1900
2000
2002
2300
Those years give an error:
1500
1800
1905
1947
2100
2200
So it doesn’t seem to be related to the start date of the Unix time.
I have no idea what could cause this bug.
Unix time starts on January 1st, 1970. That time is called the "unix time epoch".
It seems likely that Google is storing the dates as unix time stamps internally and is therefore unable to handle dates before 1970.
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