Tagging dates

Data Highlighter understands dates in many formats as long as the dates include a month, day, and year. You can supply any missing data (such as a year) by adding missing data to the page set.

If your site displays dates in one piece (for example, June 4, 2012), it's recommended that you tag dates in one piece. The fewer tags you create, the faster your tagging will be and the more accurate Data Highlighter will be.

Tag dates in one piece

1. Start tagging data on a page. See Create a page set that contains a single page or Create a page set that contains multiple pages for help on how to start tagging a page.
2. On the Tagger page, use the mouse to select a date. For example, select the following: June 4, 2012
3. Select Date > Date/time or range from the context menu that displays.

   Data Highlighter adds the date to the My Data Items column.

4. Finish creating the page set. See Create a page set that contains a single page or Create a page set that contains multiple pages for more information.

Tagging dates in separate pieces

Some pages display date information in separate pieces or use labels to identify the separate date components. For example, a page that lists multiple events might display the month and year once at the top, and display specific days next to each event. If your pages display dates in separate pieces, you'll need to tag dates in separate pieces. 

Note that Data Highlighter does not understand dates that are both tagged in separate pieces and that specify a range (such as June 4-5 and 2012).

Tag dates in separate pieces

1. Start tagging data on a page. See Create a page set that contains a single page or Create a page set that contains multiple pages for help on how to start tagging a page.
2. On the Tagger page, use the mouse to select part of a date. For example, select the following: June
3. Select Date > Advanced > date piece from the context menu that displays. For example, select Date > Advanced > Month.

   Data Highlighter adds the date piece to the My Data Items column.

4. Continue tagging pieces of the date until you've tagged all of the data that's available for the date.
5. Finish creating the page set. See Create a page set that contains a single page or Create a page set that contains multiple pages for more information.

Examples of date tags

Here are some examples of dates you can tag:

• A single date. For example, you can tag any of the following:
  • June 4, 2012
  • 4 June 2012
  • 6/4/12 - Your tags can include other delimiters and four-digit years as well, such as 6-4-2012. When numerical dates are ambiguous, Google assumes that the first number is the month. For example, 6/4/12 is intrepreted as June 4, 2012, while 13/4/12 would be interpreted as April 13, 2012.
  You can tag multiple dates on a page. For example, if you tag June 4, 2012 and June 6, 2012, the event will be intepreted as occuring twice: once on June 4th and once on June 6th.
• A range of days. For example, June 4-7 2012
  Note that delimiter between the beginning and ending days needs to be a dash (-).

• Dates with times. For example, you can tag any of the following:
  • June 4, 2012 3pm - a time followed by am or pm. Google uses normal business hours to interpet times not followed by am or pm. For example, 11 would be interpreted as 11am and 2 would be interpreted as 2pm.
  • June 4, 2012 15:00 - military time
  • June 4, 2012 3pm EST or  June 4, 2012 3pm -5:00 - Times with a time zone or with a UTC/GMT offset.
  • June 4, 2012 2-3pm or  June 4-5, 2012 2-3pm - Time ranges with or without a date range.
• Dates in separate pieces.You can use the advanced tagging option to tag the following separate pieces of text as a single date:
  • Day: Tuesday, June 4 Year: 2013
  • June 4 | Time: 7:30pm-9:30pm and 2012
  Google does not recognize date ranges that have been split into multiple tags. For example, the following tags are not valid date tags:
  • June 4-5 and 2012