Method
How we check dates
A trade show date is only useful if you can book a flight on it. So every date on bvents says where it came from and when we last looked.
The four labels
Confirmed by organiserThe organiser sent us the dates, or confirmed them when they claimed their listing. We still re-check their website as the show gets closer.
Dates announcedWe read the dates on the organiser's own website (in the page's event data, its title or heading, or repeated beside the show's name), on the organiser's calendar of all its shows, or on the event calendar of the venue that hosts it. The page says which, links to where we read them and gives the day.
ExpectedThe show runs every year or every two years, its website is live and current, and the organiser hasn't published the next dates. We show the month its cycle points to, never a day, and never in a calendar file.
Not confirmedWe know when the show last took place from our archive, but not when it's next: its site may be silent, gone or moved. We say so and link to the organiser.
Where the data comes from
bvents has listed business events since 2008. Its archive holds 158,821 editions of 44,899 shows, with venues, organisers and exhibitors as they were published. Those past editions are history: we show them as such, with their year.
For what's next, we go to each organiser's website, starting with the largest and best-known shows. So far we've checked 44,002 of them. We also read the event calendars that exhibition centres and the big organisers publish: one venue's calendar can date dozens of shows. A show is matched to a calendar entry only when its name is unique to it and the venue or organiser is its own; a date we can't pin to one show is left out. We never take dates from other event listings, and we never fill in a date we haven't read.
Numbers
Visitor, exhibitor and floor-space figures are the organisers' own, for the edition they were published for. Each page names the year. We don't estimate them.
Something wrong?
Organisers can claim their listing and correct it. Anyone can send a correction through the same form; a person checks it against the organiser's site before it's published.