Google Enriches Recipe Listings

by Stephen Logan on 14th April 2010

For many people, the option of having millions of recipes available on demand could be one of the internet’s best – or most frequent – uses.

Now, search engine operator Google is making it easier to determine the best recipes in its results.

Rich snippets for recipe results offer a five-star rating system, estimated preparation time and photographs of the finished dish.

Webmasters of food-related sites might want to take the introduction of Recipe Rich Snippets into account when addressing their use of SEO services.

Google details the introduction in a Webmaster Central blog post, where it adds that four other formats of rich snippet are also available.

Most recent among these is the introduction of Events Rich Snippets, enhancing the optimisation potential for event organisers.

This uses microdata, microformats or the Resource Description Format in attributes – called RDFa for short – to mark up information such as when the event is due to take place and its location, which Google then displays in its search results.