Google is testing yet another feature aimed at keeping users on search results pages — this time targeting the popular recipe blog industry.
The company is testing a new feature called Quick View that appears for some cooking recipes. A search for “chocolate chip cookie recipe,” for example, shows a “quick view” button on a recipe from the blog Preppy Kitchen. Clicking it pulls up a full recipe with ingredients, photos, and step-by-step instructions — all without leaving Google Search.
“We’re always experimenting with different ways to connect our users with high-quality and helpful information. We have partnered with a limited number of creators to begin to explore new recipe experiences on Search that are both helpful for users and drive value to the web ecosystem. We don’t have anything to announce right now,” Google spokesperson Brianna Duff told The Verge in an email. Duff added that the feature is a limited early experiment and that the company has agreements in place with participating recipe bloggers. Preppy Kitchen didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
If you want to see the impact of Google on the shape of the web, look no further than recipe blogs — sites that provide a fairly straightforward service but that must be search engine optimized to extreme lengths to get Google’s attention and, by extension, traffic. The wall of text filled with personal histories or diary-like ramblings are not shoved in front of readers because bloggers want to do it; that text is there so Google’s algorithms understand the content on the page and (hopefully) rank it higher in search.
Though the option to view recipes in search is still in an early trial period, it’s in line with how search is changing: Google wants users to stay on its services and platforms whenever possible. AI Overviews, which pull details from webpages and synthesize responses using artificial intelligence, are designed to make it unnecessary for searchers to scroll down through results and visit actual webpages, even when AI answers are bizarre or straight-up inaccurate. The new recipe feature could have the same effect: what’s the point in clicking through to a site, or even comparing two different recipes, when Google has its own built-in answer?
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