Google has alerted owners of recipe sites that they may begin to receive more traffic from a variety of sources.
This is due to an update which makes recipes discoverable through Google Assistant on Google Home.
Recipes are now more discoverable as a result of new structured data properties that provide users with more information about a recipe. Google says this has the potential to drive “higher quality traffic to your site.”
In order to allow more users to discover recipes, site owners will need to provide more information by adding the following properties to their structured data:
- Videos: Show users how to make the dish by adding a video array
- Category: Tell users the type of meal or course of the dish
- Cuisine: Specify the region associated with your recipe
- Keywords: Add other terms for your recipe such as a season, holiday, special event, or other descriptors.
Site owners can break down their recipes even further by specifying each step of the recipe, and also individual sections within each step.
The bare minimum requirements for making a recipe discoverable by Google Assistant on Google Home are the ‘recipeIngredient’ and ‘recipeInstructions’ properties.
Without those two properties a recipe will not be eligible for guided instructions with Google Assistant, but it can still appear in search results.
For more information, please see our detailed write up on recipe structured data.
