• SEO By the Sea, Friday, June 27, 2008 3 PM

Most food-based searches are of the local restaurant variety, with searchers on the prowl for late-night grub, a romantic dinner for two, or even a new cuisine in their own neighborhood. But what if you could actually search for meals on the Web, complete with pictures and nutrition-value info, and then make a restaurant choice? That's the logic behind the latest Yahoo search patent, which Bill Slawski examines in this post.

The Yahoo search engine would index pictures of foods based on alt tags and sets of meta data that describe how the dish would taste (i.e. spiciness, sweetness, etc.) and its nutritional content, and serve users results based on their search criteria. If a user picked a particular dish, the meal search feature could also suggest alternatives, side dishes, and possibly even restaurants where they could find it. Other results could include grocery stores to get the ingredients to make the dish and recipes.

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