I couldn't find a good recipe for Chinese Beef & Broccoli at Epicurious this weekend, so I headed to Google, where, lo and behold, they have what appears to be another new feature - query refinement via recipes. I may have just been busy when the search blogs reported on this, but I can't seem to find it in archives at SEW or SERoundtable, either, so maybe it is new. Screenshot below for "chinese recipes":
Query refinement is something that has been used for years by image search sites like Getty and travel or destination service finders, but the major search engines have generally shyed away. I'd like to see this test succeed, not because it will make SEO any easier (it will actually pull value into the tail of keyword searches, IMO), but because it makes for a smarter, better search experience.
BTW - Check out that last option in the search box... Does anyone know what "massa de yakisoba" is?
UPDATE: Looks like the results are courtesy of Google Base...
Maybe this is a way to funnel enormously diverse queries into a limited set of queries that Google has a handle on. Chops the tail off.
EGOL, why would Google want to chop of the tail? I have a few ideas, but curious what your thoughts are...
Dude, are you kidding? Higher Adwords and Adsense cost-per-click on the head (and the short tail)...
LOL - Ok, what if Google wasn't evil. Then why would they chop off the tail?
Maybe higher relevance? They can deal directly with SERPs they know and study...? I'm stretching though - I always thought that long tail searches resulted in more relevant results (on average) - that may not be true across the board. I know the perecentage of searchers that "give up" and never achieve their goals is pretty high.
Rusty: Why chop off the tail... Higher relevance was my thought.
Rand: Here's my thought on long tail relevance. If you are searching in a subject like physics or biology where most of the terms in your query string are technical terminology and unique words then the long tail can be very relevant. However, if you are searching in a theme where the search terms are all common language then the long tail can be horrible.
Going back to real estate - you type in a city name and three br ranch for sale. It might be easy for google to sniff and smell that it is a RE query before dipping into the index. They then serve back a query form, that allows them to structure your query and return better results. If this stuff is happening in your industry it would make a lot of sense to figure out what gets you relevant to the query form and structure your site to match it. Gold rush, maybe.
Just seeing how far we can indent :)
heh.. let's indent another..
I just did a recipe search... there were no ads on the inside SERPs. Also, one or two websites owned all of the listings on the first pages. Gold mine if you can get into this system.
Some times its better to ask questions then to answer them.
Yet an other indent for ya.
To continue indenting... what about google providing yet an other way to index dynamic content (Froogle, Sitemaps, Base).
Also comes up for "car for sale"
expect the highly-untapped-for way-too-long recipe space to be filled by major players soon. Personally, I cant beleive how long this space has been underutilized!
Very similar to the real estate like G Base results; https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/003529.h...
Nice find Rand!
I think the whole recipe space is pretty under SEO'd I did a few tests and without out any external links did pretty well:
https://www.google.com/search?q=black+cow+reci...
https://www.google.com/search?q=penne+ala+vodk...
https://www.google.com/search?q=bacon+polenta
MMmmmm... Penne ala Vodka - I'm gettin' hungry here Michael :)