Here is a horrible sign of the dumbing down of the world and that also exposes a flaw in Google’s popularity ranking approach. TechCrunch recently covered on how Google’s Robotic Recipe Search Favors SEO Over Good Food. It reported,” “every month about a billion of its searches are for recipes. The dishes that its search engine turns up, particularly those on the first page of results, have a huge impact on what Americans cook.”
Unfortunately a perhaps well-intended move by Google could make this a food disaster. It announced that it was adding a new kind of search, specifically for recipes. It inadvertently sided with the quick-and-easy faction against the cooking-matters group. As tech Crunch reported, “The problem is that this new search effectively prevents the thousands of excellent cooking sites and blogs from ever seeing the light of day. More importantly, those smaller sites and blogs are where much of the best work in food is happening online.”
I have written about food blogs a good bit in the past and find them wonderful. Here are a few sample posts, Exploring Food Blogs, More on Food Blogs, and List of Food Blogs. One of my favorites is Russelnod: the way we ate then to the way we eat now, written by my good friend Don Lesser.
TechCrunch gave a great example of the consequences of Google recent move. Doing a search for “cassoulet,” the French dish with beans, meat and other good things, you can refine the results by time. However, your choices are “less than 15 min,” “less than 30 min,” or “less than 60 min.” There is no option for more than 60 minutes. A classic cassoulet takes at least 4 hours to make. What ever happen to Slow Food?
The TechCrunch post concludes. “If they don’t change their current approach, I fear to contemplate the future of American cooking.” Me too.
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