Why Is My Event Date Showing Wrong, and How to Fix It

Read this when someone tells you the wrong date is showing for your event, whether that is in Google, on a social share, or in an AI answer from ChatGPT or Gemini. Work through the triage table first, then go to the section for your cause. Most of these are fifteen minute fixes. The hard part is knowing which one you have.

Start here: 60 second triage

Find what you are seeing in the left column. That tells you where to look first.

A useful mental model: your event date is not stored in one place. It is written in roughly a dozen places, and each one has to be changed by hand. When someone says "the date is wrong", they have found one of the dozen you missed.

Cause 1: the page title still says last year

What it looks like: the blue clickable headline in Google reads, for example, "2026 Speakers | Dentistry Show | NEC Birmingham" when the show is now in 2027.

Why it happens: the page title is a separate field from the visible page content. Updating the words on the page does not update it.

Where to fix it: Page Options, then SEO Settings, then Page title. Do the same for the meta description immediately below it.

The rule: maximum 60 characters, always include the year, structured as [Page topic] | [Event name] | [Year] | [Venue or key detail].

Do this on every key page, not just the homepage. Speakers, exhibitors, conference programme, registration, why visit, why exhibit.

Cause 2: Event Schema still holds the old dates

What it looks like: the visible page is correct, but Google shows the wrong date beside the result, or your event turns up in a Google events listing on the wrong day.

Why it happens: Event Schema is structured data sitting in the background of the page. It exists specifically to tell Google and AI tools your event details. Google trusts it over the visible copy, so if it is stale, the stale version is what gets shown.

Think of it as the label on the tin. You can repaint the tin as often as you like. Shoppers read the label.

Where to fix it: ASP admin, then SEO Settings, then Event Schema.

Check every field, not just the dates.

If the organiser details still name a previous organiser, update them to CloserStill Media.

If your event runs several shows under one roof, each sub-event has its own schema block with its own dates. See the Sub Event Schema article.

Cause 3: the site name carries the old year

What it looks like: the event name itself shows an old year, for example a search result headed "Event Name 2026" when 2027 is on sale.

Why it happens: Google works out what to call your site from a small set of signals, chiefly the homepage title and your site-level name setting. If any of those still carry last year, Google keeps showing last year, sometimes across every page on the site.

This is the one people miss, because it is set once at site level and then forgotten.

Where to fix it:

1. Site settings in ASP, the site name field. Confirm it carries the correct year, or no year at all.
2. The homepage page title, under Page Options, then SEO Settings.
3. Event Schema event name, as in Cause 2.

All three need to agree. If they disagree, Google picks one, and it may not be the one you want.

Better still: where the site name does not need a year, take the year out. A name with no year cannot go stale.

Cause 4: stale dates elsewhere on the site

What it looks like: the homepage is right, but a visitor lands on the agenda or a news article that still advertises last year.

Why it matters: this is not only an embarrassment, it costs traffic. At Dentistry Show Birmingham, key pages held their rankings but lost 60 to 90% of their impressions purely from showing old information. The page still ranked. People stopped clicking it.

How to find every one of them in about 20 minutes:

1. Open Screaming Frog, set Mode to Spider, enter your homepage address, click Start.
2. When the crawl finishes, open the Internal tab.
3. In the search box, type a year, for example 2026. Repeat for 2025 and 2027.
4. Switch the view dropdown above the table to Page Titles and search the same years. That finds titles still showing the old date.
5. Every result is a page to update.

Then in Google Search Console, go to Performance, Search results, Pages tab, and check whether any of those pages are earning clicks. Fix the ones with traffic first.

Important: update the content, never the URL. Changing /agenda to /agenda-2027 throws away every month of ranking history that URL has built. Update the page where it stands.

Cause 5: nothing is wrong, Google has not caught up

What it looks like: you fixed everything last week and Google still shows the old date.

Why it happens: Google only shows what it last saw. If it has not re-crawled the page since you made the change, it is still serving the old version. Nothing is broken.

What to do:

1. Open Google Search Console.
2. Paste the page address into the Inspect URL bar at the top.
3. Check the date under "Last crawl". If it predates your fix, that is your answer.
4. Click Request Indexing.

How long to wait:

Do not keep editing the page while you wait. Repeated changes do not make Google come back faster, and you risk introducing a new error.

Cause 6: the wrong date is not on your site at all

What it looks like: your site is correct, Google is correct, but ChatGPT, or a listing site, or a partner page, still says the old date.

Why it happens: AI assistants and search engines both draw on sources beyond your own website. Event directories, association pages, partner and sponsor sites, media listings and old press releases all carry your dates, and many are never updated.

What to do:

1. Search your event name plus the old year and see which sites come up.
2. List the top ten. Most events have the same usual suspects: event directories, industry association calendars, media partners, exhibitors advertising their stand.
3. Ask each one to update. For exhibitors and partners, this is usually a line in an existing email.
4. Publish a clear, current dates and venue statement on your own site, on a stable URL. This gives AI tools something correct and recent to cite.

Expect AI answers to be the slowest to correct. They rebuild their picture of your event over weeks, not days.

The full date sweep

When dates change, change them everywhere in one sitting. This is the complete list.

The date accuracy checklist

Run this the week after the show, and again before the next campaign window opens. Put a name against every line.

When to escalate to ASP

Handle it yourself if the fix is a page title, a meta description, Event Schema fields, or on-page copy.

Escalate to ASP or your digital team if:

• The site name field is not editable from your admin
• The wrong date persists more than four weeks after the fix and a re-index request
• A URL needs to change, which means a redirect is needed
• Event Schema is missing entirely rather than out of date
• The event appears twice in Google with two different dates

Related articles

• Edition Rollover and Content Preservation Playbook
• Finding Lost, Broken and Date-Stamped Pages with Search Console and Screaming Frog
• ASP SEO Settings Reference Guide
• Sub Event Schema
• Event Website Best Practice Guide

Need ASP to diagnose it for you?