Google is providing menus in search results, kind of. According to the official Google blog, menus are popping up for select US restaurants. Of the four restaurants Eater tried to find menus for — Husk Charleston, Au Cheval in Chicago, Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles, and Prime Meats in Brooklyn — only one actually had an embedded menu. In order to get the menu to appear, you have to search for "prime meats menu"; it doesn't just show up when you search for the restaurant name. So let's call it a work in progress?
Google had been experimenting with search result menus for awhile now, but this is the first they have officially announced anything. The company tells the Verge the menus "from an unnamed data partner" that's "similar to how Google uses data from The Weather Channel and other partners to pull in data for searches about the weather." Meanwhile, the Google-owned Zagat also pushes content into map results for restaurants.
As for how it looks, the menu features an "At a Glance" section that lists a handful of dishes from the menu. Menu sections are separated into tabs and seem to be standard to Google. For example, the Google Prime Meats menu lists Small Plates, Soups, Salads, Raw Bar, Hand Crafted Sausages, Main, House Specials, Lamb, and Accompaniments, whereas the Prime Meats website only separates out the sausages. Drinks do not appear to be listed anywhere. In fact, searching for a cocktail bar like PDT in New York City only brings up the hot dogs they serve and none of the cocktails.
· Google Restaurant Menus [Google]
· Full restaurant menus will now show up in Google search results [The Verge]
· All Google Coverage on Eater [-E-]