As a kind of experiment, I signed up for Pro Blogger's "31 Day's to Building A Better Blog". At first I assumed it was going to be a bunch of nonsense advice about linking to other sites, sticking ads all over your blog and basic SEO pointers. But, I've actually found that it has inspired me to write more posts than I had been previously, and I feel like the author, Darren Rowse has some really good advice about promoting yourself and your blog. He sends out an email each day with a task, some of them to write posts, and some of them to guide you towards defining your blog further. It might not be for everyone, but I've found it helpful. Day 2 (I'm a little bit behind...) was the task of creating a "List Post," so here is mine:
Online Recipe Sites:
I use the internet a lot when I'm looking for recipes - either for alternate versions of recipes I have in cookbooks, or to find recipes that I don't have. My general search pattern is to do a Google search from my Firefox browser search bar and see what comes up. If I don't find anything (generally on the first page of results), I'll go to specific recipe sites and do individual searches. Between Google results and my own 'favorite' sites, here's a list of the sites that I visit frequently, along with some new sites I've just discovered, and a basic summary of each. I intend to do more detailed reviews of some of these sites in the near future - hopefully another regularly occurring feature. I'll bet you can't wait.
- Sites that come from magazines:
- Sites from TV networks (specifically the Food Network):
- Established online recipe sites:
- Newer online recipe and community sites:
Epicurious is the online conglomeration of different Conde Nast food titles including Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Cookie, Self, Parade and Nutrition data. This site has a lot of useful functionality: Good search; community functionality; active forums; great editorial content from the partner magazines; multiple blogs; great photos and videos; good recipes also from the partner titles. Because content comes from multiple sources, each with a different market or demographic, the type and focus of recipes on the site is varied, which I think is a good thing. All of the partner sites also each have their own sites, some with recipes, some without. I'm on the fence about that, but more on that later.
The virtual world of Martha Stewart is as vast and information filled as I'm sure her real world is. The site not only has recipes and editorial content about food, but content about the whole Martha Stewart lifestyle (Entertaining! Crafts! Holidays!). I find the site very difficult to browse - there is so much content - photos, video, editorial - that I often get lost. There are lots of links to "Best X Recipes" (where X=chicken or summer or quiche) but when you click on the link, you get photos or slide shows (rather than a list of recipes) and have to click multiple times to get to the recipes. I do find it inspiring, but I don't use it often.
I don't have cable TV, so I am admitedly unfamiliar with many of the personalities and shows that are featured on this site. I think that if I knew who some of the personalities were, it would definitely influence my experience of this site. Obviously, I do know some of them (I think Rachel Ray is annoying and relies too much on prepared food, Bobby Flay sold out and Emeril is just annoying) but I'm not a fan of this site. Because it's TV, it relies too much on video which I think only works well for instructional type content.
Another Food Network site that exists only as a website and is targeted towards a younger demographic who are interested in food and cooking. It uses Facebook as a way for users to connect (via Facebook Connect) and features lots of video content as well as recipes and editorial content (blogs, newsletters). I commend Food Network for taking this step of creating an online only content channel.
Recipezaar is similar to All Recipes, but with a little more focus on the community, with very limited editorial content. The forums and discussions in the community section seem to be very active. This site is also part of the Food Network, but seems to be aimed at an older and/or more suburban demographic.
(Martha Stewart could be included in this group as well...)
A soul-less link farm of recipes that often comes up at the top of Google results. The site is made up of user submitted recipes, and after searching for info about the site, it seems like the real purpose of the site is to allow users to use the site as a way to "never lose your favorite recipes." This is a noble cause, but there is no sense of a user community, no functionality that allows user comments/reviews and no images, so the site is nothing but text. I find it totally uninspiring and I don't think I've ever used a recipe from this site.
It used to be that this site came up frequently in Google searches, but less so frequently. To me, All Recipes is the penultimate recipe site: it has all of the functionality that a product manager or site user could possibly dream up: accurate and functional search; ability to save recipes; recipe collections (groups of recipes in a common theme/ingredient); an active community that regularly rates and reviews recipes and uploads content (recipes and photos); great browsing features like "recipes like this," recently viewed recipes and top searches; decent editorial content. But I never use this site unless a recipe comes up in a search. I'm not sure why.
Foodista is a wiki for food that is trying to be "the world's largest, highest quality cooking encyclopedia." Besides recipes, there is content about techniques and tools, blog content and photos from Flickr that supplement food, tool and technique articles. Like most wikis, content is edited by anyone who has an account on the site. The site also has tools that bloggers can add to their sites to increase traffic. Foodista was created by ex-Amazon people and Amazon is a major investor in the site.
Foodbuzz is the realization (by someone else) of an idea that I had in the past week or so. I've been doing a lot of food blog reading, many of which post good or great recipes, photos and instructions. But these posts don't always come up in Google searches. Foodbuzz has created a network of food bloggers (and other people interested in food) and aggregates them all in one place (they claim to have content from over 10,000 food blogs). Users can search for, comment on and "buzz up" content on the site, vote and see profiles of other users who 'buzzed' the content. Since all of the content is user generated, there is limited editorial and most of the content featured is by popularity or according to a given ingredient or topic. Also includes a restaurant guide.
I know there are many more recipe sites, but these are the ones I'm most familiar with and that I use most frequently. Any suggestions on other sites to use or look at?
Of all of these sites, Food Network, Cooks.com and Recipezaar get the most traffic (according to Compete.com).
*Disclaimer: I've done work for both Conde Nast (Nutrtion Data) and for Martha Stewart
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