Google added Recipe View to its lineup of search results, helping users find meals to prepare but letting them refine search by cooking time, calorie count and ingredients.
Google Feb. 24 filled another hole in its sweeping search results
refinements by adding Recipe View, accessible by a button users can click in the left-hand
rail to learn how to concoct meals, desserts and other comestibles.
Google has offered recipe search in the traditional way,
allowing users to type "veal saltimbocca," for example, in the search box to see suggested ways of
preparing the meal.
However, typing "veal saltimbocca" is really
just another broad search in a sea of millions of generalized searches.
Some
cooks are looking to work with specific ingredients or time constraints
for the
meals they choose to prepare. Google said some 10 million of its daily
searches are recipe related so it makes sense to make life easier for
those searchers.
Clicking the "Recipes" button helps users choose
the right recipe from search results by not only offering ratings and pictures,
but providing filters for ingredients, cooking time and calorie count for health-conscious
chefs.
Take that veal saltimbocca example. A searcher may want
to find a recipe they can make that doesn't include lemon, a common ingredient
in the dish, and takes 30 minutes or less to prepare.
The searcher can simply click the "no" box next
to lemon and then click the box for "less than 30 minutes" of cook
time. Up pop results from reliable Websites such as Epicurious.com, About.com,
Food.com and the FoodNetwork.com.
Will the recipes work? That depends on the degree of
kitchen skill and finesse for the chef. Veal saltimbocca is a dish best
flavored delicately because it often involves mixing lemon with cheese.
Additional features in Recipe View let search for recipes related to
holidays, such as Christmas, or those created by celebrity chefs, such
as Mario Batali.
Google Chef Scott Giambastiani
shows searchers how to use Recipe View in this quick video demo. Recipe
View is available now in the United States and Japan, and is coming to more countries
later.
Some have noted that Google has "copied"
Microsoft Bing again, as Bing has offered recipe search since January 2010.
However, it's important to note the instantiation is
different. Do the same "veal saltimbocca" search on Bing and while you'll see recipe suggestions on
the left, there are no ways to slice and dice results the way Google does by ingredients,
cooking time and calorie count.
Recipe View is a natural extension of the left-hand rail search refinements Google introduced last May.
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