Strategy Details

The strategy depends entirely on

1. regional use of Google Calendar (organizations and residents)

2. understandable public calendar names

3. keyword “fourcornerscalendars” (and others) in each public calendar description

Here's how public calendars should be named and the description should be used.

Google's calendar search tries to match words in the search field with words in

1. the calendar name,

2. the calendar description and

3. all calendar event names and descriptions

Our strategy is to return a list of many regional calendars to searchers using our place names and key words. To be successful, the calendar description for each public calendar should use “fourcornerscalendars” as well as all the regional names and key words which we would like to trigger the return of the calendar to the searcher. For example, if I were describing a Mancos event calendar I might say;

"This is the Mancos, Colorado, event calendar. Mancos is located in the beautiful Mancos River Valley at the foot of the San Juan Mountain chain of the Rocky Mountains 50 miles west of Durango, and is the town nearest the entrance to Mesa Verde National Park. Montezuma County has a great deal to offer residents and tourists to the Four Corners Area, including the Canyon of the Ancients National Monument with the highest concentration of prehistoric pueblo ruins and archaeological features in the world. Archaeology is a primary activity in this area. Other towns in the region include Cortez, Dolores and Towaoc.
This is a fourcornerscalendars calendar."

I've used many regional place names, so a search of Google calendars relating to any of them will return this calendar. It will benefit every organization to mention as many such place names as possible in their calendar description. Additionally, I have included fourcornerscalendars, our local keyword. When included in the calendar description this keyword allows a simple way for a single search to return all regional calendars.

There is also a description associated with each event in a calendar. However, I would not recommend repeating the above name-rich description within events. Event descriptions should be limited to the specifics of the event, such as the activity focus, location, who to contact for further information, etc. If the full description were included in each event, it would trigger a calendar search return for each and every event, which would significantly clutter the calendar search return list.

Calendar names should, of course, fully identify the organization and possibly identify the type of activity of the organization. For instance “Mesa Verde NP Lecture Series”. Good calendar naming enables searchers to easily choose calendars from the list. Calendars with acronym names will be more difficult to identify.

If followed regionally, this strategy will provide residents, organizations and visitors a means of finding, planning and participating in activities chosen from our rich Four Corners lifestyle.

To see how to set up your calendar, read the How To section.