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The end is near for Event Websites

For many years, we have been frustrated by Google’s refusal to recognise National and International events across our network.

The refusal culminates in Google accusing us of duplicate content and refusing to index the pages (Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user).

In most cases, the event description is largely the same.  Let’s face it, a national event hardly changes from state to state, city to city, other than the individual events that take place in each state, that are listed below the main content.

Example

National Ride2School Day

Join more than 350,000 students across the nation who will ride, walk, scoot and skate to school on Friday 19 March 2027.

National Ride2School Day is Australia’s biggest celebration of active travel and the peak of the nationwide Ride2School program which works to help children get their 60 minutes of daily exercise by riding a bike to school.

National Ride2School Day is a day full of fun and colour where students teachers and parents discover the joy of riding and kick-start healthy habits for the future.

Riding to school can help students perform better in the classroom. Students who actively travel to school are more awake and alert. Their concentration levels and understanding of content improves.

National Events

National

  • National BBQ Day
  • National Children’s Week
  • National Diabetes Week
  • National Pyjama Day
  • National Recycling Week
  • National Ride2School Day

International 

  • International Day of Potato
  • International Dog Day
  • International Men’s Day

National Event Strategy

National Events get there own pages

In mid 2026, we thought we had found the answer that would appease Google and lose the dreaded Duplicate Content tag, and hopefully get the events indexed in each city.

Every national event in our system (100’s) were given their own page on onlyaustralia.com.au linked from each city.  That way, readers could search and find the event in their city, click on the link and see the page hosted at onlyaustralia.com.au.

WIN WIN we thought, initially it worked well, and then GoogleBot had second thoughts.  A search in August could not find any of the national pages in Google search results and to really compound it, a site search for a direct match search term found nothing.  Then traffic to each city started waining to the point where it was unfeasible.

What’s On Network

What’s On no more..

It’s a dying industry..

Thanks to AI answering many searches that for many years came to What’s On websites has resulted in a massive fall in traffic.

Advertisers’ are feeling it to.  Once apon a time they could advertise to readers looking for “things to do” but no longer.  Ask the question now and you are told about a few theatre shows, music shows but thats about it.

Great if you are looking for theatre, but what about other events.

We are surving by loyal readers and our weekly newsletter, but that’s about it/

I can’t see a way forward, and would love to hear from anyone with idea’s.

 

 

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