Google has started penalizing websites that use event markups to promote their offers and coupons, or anything else other than actual events. This violates Google’s guidelines as it creates confusion among users.
Google’s paramount goal is to provide its users with the best possible search experience. The different markups are there for the same reason. Unfortunately, some websites are using this tool to promote their offers and exploiting the tools that Google provides to websites to provide search engine users with the most relevant results to their search queries.
Google has started issuing a manual penalty to websites abusing this markup tool. They are sending a message by barring these websites from using any markups, which will severely damage their visibility in search results. If you are found to be in violation, you won’t like the results of this penalty. You can potentially lose years of hard work you have put into improving your rank in SERPs.
If you are among the website owners use event markups to promote other things, then it’s important to stop this practice now. It’s just not worth the risk. It is recommended only to use white hat SEO strategies to promote your site. Google is big and powerful. Some people think that spammy or black hat tactics they use will pass unnoticed by Google in the billions of search engine results occurring each day. Not true. They will find out either organically, or through reporting from among a very vocal user base.
Note that the issue is not limited to the event markup. If you are using any markup for another purpose than what it is meant to describe, you will be hit by a penalty so heavy that it may take months for your site to recover in the rankings. We advise you not to use these unauthorized tactics. You won’t get away with fooling the most advanced search engine in the world. Google may not notice right away, but they will eventually notice, and they might not take action immediately, but they will ultimately act.
