Google Ends Test of ‘Recipe Quick View’ in Search Results ⇥ bloomberg.com

Julia Love and Davey Alba, Bloomberg:

In recent months, Alphabet Inc.-owned Google has tested Recipe Quick View, which showed some food bloggers’ content in search. The company framed the feature as an attempt to help users determine whether they are interested in a recipe before visiting a website. But some bloggers said they feared that the product would keep users from clicking through to their sites, depriving them of traffic and ad revenue.

Google on Tuesday confirmed it ended the trial. “We continually experiment with ways to make it easier for people to find helpful information on Search,” a spokesperson for Google said in a statement. “Learnings from these experiments help to inform future development and efforts.”

Google began testing this feature around October. While the company did not provide any commentary beyond well-worn lines about “always experimenting”, it is not unreasonable to see it as a reaction to common tactics by recipe bloggers to juice their organic rankings and ad revenue. Google has repeatedly explained that it values just the recipe, but folk wisdom among bloggers indicates that alone is insufficient for ranking well. Alas, I am not sure how much any of this matters in an era of A.I. results.

Also, the word is “lessons”.