This is an experience many of us are familiar with. After opening a food blogger’s recipe, all you have to do is scroll through a pile of irrelevant content to actually get to the ingredients and instructions. Google is piloting a feature that could eliminate this step, albeit as a result of its own policies.
The Verge noticed a new button called “Quick View” on the selected recipe thumbnail. Press this button to see the complete recipe without leaving the search results page. In their testing, searching for “chocolate chip cookie recipe” brought up this quick view button on a site called Preppy Kitchen.
“We’re always experimenting with different ways to connect users with high-quality, useful information,” Google representative Brianna Duff told Engadget about these quick view recipes. “We have partnered with a limited number of creators to begin exploring new recipe experiences on search that are beneficial to our users and bring value to the web ecosystem. We have nothing to announce at this time. Google has contracts with participating bloggers, but the company declined to provide details about the scope of the test.
When it comes to online recipes, it’s quite the Catch-22 that Google has created. This quick view feature is appealing to home cooks, as so many food blogs front load their posts with photos and personal stories before actually sharing the recipe. You may feel it. But what drove bloggers to that approach in the first place was Google’s own rules, which generally ensured that longer posts were indexed higher in search results and received more traffic. (No offense to all the food bloggers out there, but the only chocolate chip cookie recipe you’ll ever need is the one on the back of a bag of chocolate chips.)
While this recipe feature is only an early trial, Google is rolling out other tools aimed at keeping users on its web pages and platforms. AI in Search Overview is one of the latest (and sometimes surreal) ways the company is changing the rules of engagement for web content.
