QUICK HIT: Event Markup Spam Misleads Users at Google

Google announced that it has updated guidelines related to webmaster/SEO's use of event markup (schema.org) after receiving less-than positive feedback from users. 

Some publishers in the coupons and voucher space were reportedly marking up their offers and discounts with event markup and generated placement on the search engine's results pages - either unknowingly or knowingly (likely the latter). 

Google wrote that using event markup in order to describe something that is not an event creates a bad user experience because it triggers a "rich result for something that will happen at a particular time, despite no actual event being present". That could obviously be very frustrating for users so the crack down certainly makes sense. 

Google warned that it may take manual action against publishers for going against the well-established guidelines. The search engine has long penalized sites for structured markup spam but it is clearly sending a warning signal for those still employing this technique to cease and desist.