Google Catches Up To Bing With Recipe View

We usually look to Google to be the first to launch new search features, and we can usually adapt our SEO campaign by following Google’s updates. However, this time, Bing was well ahead of Google. As in, over a year ahead. Better late than never though, so we’ll of course, welcome Google’s Recipe View feature with open arms.

Google has a number of handy search features on the left hand side of your search results page, and the latest one is Recipe View. Recipe searches comprise a whopping 1% of all Google searches, so it only made sense for Google to jump in and make recipe searches even easier for users. Now, when you perform a search, you can narrow your results to only show recipes. Not only that, but the feature allows you to narrow your results further, depending on the ingredients you’d like to use, cooking time and calories!

You don’t have to be as specific as you might think in your search either. If you have a bag of apples that you need to use up, perform a search just for apples, then click Recipes on the left, and you’ll end up with a list of apple related recipes!

Now, this feature makes recipe searches easier for users, but does it mean anything for your business? Well, if your business is food related, then it could! Do you own a restaurant, cafe, farm, or ethnic market? Any business that’s related to food could very well choose to include recipes on their website for client/customer use. If the proper coding is used (markup formats such as microformats and RDFa), your recipes could be featured in Google’s Recipe View! While recipes may not be the focus of your business, they could be a smart addition to your SEO efforts. You practice SEO to become more visible on the internet, so adding one more avenue for Google users to find your website can only increase your rank on Google. Just be sure recipes are a relevant avenue for your business before diving in.