If you have a recipe site and aren’t already testing out AMP, you might want to consider testing it sooner rather than later. Google is displaying AMP recipes in the mobile search results both in regular card style formats as well as the much talked about AMP carousel style too.
Google first announced AMP recipes last year and while some have seen AMP recipe cards, not everyone has been seeing the AMP recipe carousels.
I have been seeing AMP recipes in the carousel since December, but not everyone appears to be seeing them.
While most of the sites tend to be the larger sites, that seems to be primarily because they have multiple similar recipes to fill a carousel. So this might mean for those bloggers that have one recipe with multiple different variations on the page, it might make sense to split them up into individual ones, if they are using AMP.
Here are some examples of what it looks like in the search results for a variety of sites:
And these examples show the scrolling through – it simply ends on a recipe, it doesn’t have a call to action to view more like some of Google’s carousels have.
You can also see some seem to be favoring newer recipes. For example, in this AMP carousel, it notes that the recipes are from one month ago, back through September 2016. This seems to be more for themed recipes, where a website features many different recipes around a theme or style of cooking. But it also shows that AMP carousels can be displayed for smaller sites.
Google has also tested a “skinnier AMP format” style in their carousels too.
And they have also used a much more simplified version as well.
It also shows the importance of titles with AMP recipes. We saw multiple examples where shorter recipes just didn’t have the same appeal as ones with longer recipe titles. Compare these two carousels, both from the same site, but one using longer recipe titles, while the other uses much shorter ones.
There can also be more than one AMP carousel on the same search results page. So just because a “big brand” recipe site has a carousel on the search results does not mean you are excluded from having a carousel of your own appear.
All recipes within an AMP carousel are AMP. So if you only have some of your recipes in AMP format, it may not trigger a carousel.
There are also AMP recipe opportunities outside of the carousel. This is a regular AMP recipe Google displays in the search results.
Google will also show content from recipe sites with AMP even if they aren’t proper schema marked up recipes, such as top recipe lists. This is another way recipe sites can leverage AMP, even just for testing, if they are unsure they want to make all their recipes AMP-ready. For example, this one has a main article, followed by an additional carousel, all in AMP:
And the regular version without the added carousel. This is just a regular AMP article.
AMP recipe carousels don’t seem to appear for all users. I have seen them since December, but others have yet to see them. You can track AMP views in Google Analytics and Google also has information on AMP via Google Search Console.
While AMP does not give recipe sites a ranking boost per se, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Google eventually move to an AMP only carousel model for all recipe searches, especially as it rolls out. And they do show multiple AMP recipe carousels for recipe searches already.
If you haven’t begun testing AMP recipes yet, it might be something you want to consider adding, so that you can test and debug any issues prior to AMP recipes being rolled out on a wider basis.
Jennifer Slegg
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