8 replies to this topic

[Mikl]

I recently noticed that rich snippet text seems to have disappeared from search results, both in Google and Bing.

 

Let me be more precise. I'm referring to the information that used to appear in the left-hand sidebar of the SERPs when you searched for certain types of information. My particular interest is in recipes. When you searched for a recipe, the sidebar would show controls for selecting the preparation time, cooking time, calorie count, and various other criteria, plus including or excluding specific ingredients. The searcher could use those controls to filter the results (including out-filtering any hits that aren't in fact recipes).

 

It's that feature which seems to have disappeared (as far as I can see).

 

Maybe it doesn't matter. Perhaps nobody ever used it (I certainly didn't). But it's a bit annoying, given that, a couple of years ago, I spent a long day coding my own sites to with the required microformats, all to no good purpose.

 

This is not really a question. But any comments would be appreciated.

 

Mike

[Alan Perkins]

I still see plenty of rich snippets, for all sorts of data types.

 

Try searching for [banana bread] - do you see recipes snippets?  I do.

[Alan Perkins]

Oh sorry, I just read your post again.  Yes, you're right - those results have been retired.

 

See

 

http://www.google.com/landing/recipes/

 

for what they used to look like, and a "Try it now" that fails to match the expectations set up by that page.

[Mikl]

Thanks for that, Alan. Presumably it was retired because few people used it. That wouldn't be surprising.

 

But I wish Google had made some sort of announcement, instead of continuing to show the same information about it (like the page you referenced).

 

Mike

[HubUK]

I am glad I came across this post as I am contemplating redesigning the whole of my recipe and cooking web site using WordPress (all 5,000+ pages). One of the reasons was the ability to have rich snippets added automatically to recipes by the use of a plugin.

The rich snippets were only ever available on Google.com and not Google.co.uk although they were threatened to be rolled out some time ago.

Why would Google scrap them when a lot of the big recipe and cooking web sites were encouraged to add them (us poor one man bands couldn't cope with that)? Can we be sure Google has scrapped them or are they to re-emerge at a later date? Or are they still used in ranking recipes but now as part of all searches?

Should I continue to add rich snippets just in case?

[Jill]

 

Should I continue to add rich snippets just in case?

 

 

 

I would say yes. They certainly can't hurt anything and could help.

[Mikl]

They certainly can't hurt anything and could help.

 

Agreed. But, in the case, of HubUK, he is faced with the task of adding the required coding to 5,000-odd recipes. That could turn out to be a lot of work - for possibly no reward.

 

In my case, it took a good day to code up about 200 recipes. I was able to automate the actual mark-up, but I still had to manually collect all the data. I don't like to think how long it would take for 5,000 pages. Just getting a good estimate of the total prep time for a recipe is not exactly trivial.

 

HubUK, you asked:

 

Why would Google scrap them when a lot of the big recipe and cooking web sites were encouraged to add them

 

I suspect it was because nobody was using them. Which isn't surprising. I don't know how typical I am, but I often search for recipes. I would never think to filter the results by cooking time, or number of calories, or whether the recipe contains garlic.

 

Or are they still used in ranking recipes

 

They were never used to determine ranking. They were supposedly just a convenience for the searchers.

 

Mike

[Alan Perkins]

I suspect they were scrapped because they did not conform to Google's new layout, based on 

 

[Web] [Other] [Other] [Other] [Other] [More] [Search Tools]

 

where "Search Tools" gives

 

[Results Location Tools] [Time Tools] [Results Type Tools] [User Location Tools]

 

This layout seems part of a responsive (desktop, tablet, mobile) strategy that will be cleanly applied.

 

My guess is that extra recipe controls ran counter to that strategy and have therefore been scrapped. That's not to say that you don't get recipe rich snippets - you do - just not the extra controls that used to be there.

[ElvisH]

 

 

I would say yes. They certainly can't hurt anything and could help.

 

 

 

according to Mikl it's a 25 days of work, i wouldn't say it "can't hurt", unless you got nothing better to do for a whole month.
 

I'm sure you can find better things to do to improve your website's numbers (more income/visitors better roi etc..)