Recipe View – Optimizing Recipe Content For Google
February 26th, 2011Cooking enthusiasts are in for a real treat with Google’s Recipe Search functionality. “Recipe View” has just been rolled out across the US and Japan to allow users to search for recipes and narrow search results by ratings, ingredients, cooking time and calories.
You’ll see in the example above, that the following components are displayed within the search results for “butter chicken”.
- Ingredients selection (yes or no)
- Cook time (less than 15, 30 or 60 mins)
- Calories (less than 100, 300 or 500 calories)
- Number of Reviews
- Average recipe rating stars (as voted upon by users on the website)
- Cooking time
- Ingredients listed within Rich Snippet display
- Calories listed within Rich Snippet display
Being based in Australia, I am still able to view and use the Recipe View function on Google.com, although it is not available on the Google.com.au and Google.co.nz domains as yet. This is an easy function to roll out by Google once they confirm feedback from users in the United States and Japan.
Food related websites need to understand how this new search functionality works and optimize their recipe content to gain visibility in Google. Even if you’re website is not based in the US or Japan, I recommend that you implement the optimization process as outlined below as quickly as possible to get a jump start before it is implemented in your country.
Google is using their Rich Snippets structured data approach for Recipe View website content. Rich Snippets is based upon a data structure method using one of microdata, microformats or RDFa. Google has provided specific instructions for Recipe content on their webmaster support site, although they state that their code markup is not part of the official hRecipe draft specification as published on Microformats.org.
Following is the range of property data that can be applied to segments of a recipe. You need not provide all properties, however markup elements that relate to recipe content you have published on your website.
Users will be able to search for property attributes within Google such as ingredients, cook time and calories. The more comprehensive your recipe content is, the more likely you are increasing your website pages within Google search results.
| Property | Description |
| name (fn) | Required. The name of the dish. |
| recipeType(tag) | The type of dish: for example, appetizer, entree, dessert … |
| photo | Image of the dish being prepared. |
| published | The date the recipe was published, in ISO date format. |
| summary | A short summary describing the dish. |
| review | A review of the dish. Can include nested review information. |
| prepTime | The length of time it takes to prepare the recipe for dish, in ISO 8601 duration format. Can use min, max as child elements to specify a range of time. |
| cookTime | The time it takes to actually cook the dish, in ISO 8601 duration format. Can use min, max as child elements to specify a range of time. |
| totalTime(duration) | The total time it takes to prepare the cook the dish, in ISO 8601 duration format. Can use min, max as child elements to specify a range of time. |
| nutrition | Nutrition information about the recipe. Can contain the following child elements: servingSize, calories, fat,saturatedFat, unsaturatedFat, carbohydrates, sugar, fiber, protein, cholesterol. These elements are not explicitly part of the hRecipe microformat, but Google will recognize them. |
| instructions | The steps to make the dish. Can contain the child element instruction, which can be used to annotate each step. |
| yield | The quantity produced by the recipe (for example, number of people served, number of servings, etc). |
| ingredient | An ingredient used in the recipe. Can contain child items name (name of the ingredient) and amount. Use this to identify individual ingredients. |
| author | Creator of the recipe. Can include nested Person information. |
For those of you who are not coders, the following html code may not make sense. Take the time however to examine some of the property attributes within the code such as <span class=”cooktime”> and <span class=”ingredient”> to understand how content is marked-up within your content html.
<div class="hrecipe"> <span class="item"> <h1 class="fn">Grandma's Holiday Apple Pie</h1> </span> <img src="apple-pie.jpg" class="photo" /> By <span class="author">Carol Smith</span> Published: <span class="published"> November 5, 2009<span class="value-title" title="2009-11-05"></span></span> <span class="summary">This is my grandmother's apple pie recipe. I like to add a dash of nutmeg.</span> <span class="review hreview-aggregate"> <span class="rating"> <span class="average">4.0</span> stars based on <span class="count">35</span> reviews </span> </span> Prep time: <span class="preptime">30 min <span class="value-title" title="PT30M"></span></span> Cook time: <span class="cooktime">1 hour<span class="value-title" title="PT1H"></span></span> Total time: <span class="duration">1 hour 30 min <span class="value-title" title="PT1H30M"></span></span> Yield: <span class="yield">1 9" pie (8 servings)</span> <span class="nutrition"> Serving size: <span class="servingsize">1 medium slice</span> Calories per serving: <span class="calories">250</span> Fat per serving: <span class="fat">12g</span> </span> Ingredients: <span class="ingredient"> Thinly-sliced <span class="name">apples</span>: <span class="amount">6 cups</span> </span> <span class="ingredient"> <span class="name">White sugar</span>: <span class="amount">3/4 cup</span> </span> Directions: <span class="instructions"> 1. Cut and peel apples 2. Mix sugar and cinnamon. Use additional sugar for tart apples. ... </span> </div> |
For some websites this will be a large undertaking. If you require assistance with the mark-up of your recipe content, please do not hesitate to contact Jacqui Jones at Keyword Intent.