Hitwise Intelligence - LeeAnn Prescott - US
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November 21, 2006
Recipe Sites Embrace User Generated Content, Video, RSS
Every year at Hitwise we see huge Thanksgiving- and Christmas-related spikes in visits to the Food & Beverage - Lifestyle & Reference category as dinner hosts plan their holiday gatherings. In 2005, visits to the category increased by 41% for the week of Thanksgiving compared to the previous week, and by 30% for the week of Christmas compared to the previous week, as illustrated on the chart below. While this may seem obvious, it shows that food planning and preparation is the most last minute of all holiday activities - we start seeing increases in searches for decorations, gifts, and children's activities much earlier in advance of the individual holiday dates. The search term suggestion report for 'thanksgiving' shows just how much people were searching for non-food related Thanksgiving content in the last 4 weeks.
You might not think about online recipe sites as ripe for "web 2.0" innovation, but recipe sites have long been collecting user generated content in the form of recipe reviews, which are incredibly helpful to cooks. All Recipes is the leader of UGC in the food world, with both user submitted recipes and reviews - just like YouTube, the best recipes move to the top based on the recipe ratings and reviews. This has been going on far longer than YouTube has been in existence. In addition, many of the leading sites, such as Epicurious and Food Network have adopted RSS feeds and are promoting video clips not only of cooking shows, but instructions on things like how to make the perfect pie crust or how to cook a turkey. These videos can be extremely useful for those attempting specific dishes for the first time. Epicurious is also offering mobile services, which include sending recipes and shopping lists to your phone.
I examined the top 10 recipe sites for last week to see how many are offering reviews, videos and RSS Feeds. Eight of the top 10 offer user generated recipe reviews, five offer videos, and seven offer RSS feeds. Yahoo! Food, the category's newest entrant, ranked at number 11 after only 2 weeks online, is actively promoting video content, and the leading downstream site for the week ending November 18, 2006 was Yahoo! Video Streaming, which accounted for 8% of its downstream traffic. Video viewing is also fairly popular on Epicurious, with video.epicurious.com as the 7th most popular downstream domain that week, accounting for 1.95% of its downstream visits.
It's encouraging to see that recipe sites, including those from big brands such as Food Network, Kraft and Betty Crocker are engaging in conversation with their customers by embracing user generated content making as well making moves toward delivering content in new ways.
Posted by LeeAnn Prescott at 03:10 PM
Posted to Food and Beverage
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Comments
Quick question LeeAnn. Does the top 10 remain in the same order throughout the year? Is the Market share consistent? I would never of guessed Kraft Food sits at number 3 and Epicurious captures only 2.5% of the market. Is Kraft Food at number 3 due to some very specific Thanksgiving recipe?
Posted by: jonlabo at December 5, 2006 03:28 PM
The rankings remain remarkably consistent throughout the year for the top 6 sites. There are some minor fluctuations, but nothing big. The sites below that are slightly more volatile in rankings. Epicurious, while also my favorite site, is a mainly a site for gourmets, and does not necessarily cater to the average American trying to put dinner on the table every night for their family.
Posted by: LeeAnn Prescott at December 7, 2006 02:05 AM
