New Company Improves Online Recipe Searches and Attracts Investors

Because of the internet, preparing a meal has never been easier as long as you can follow instructions. Unfortunately, a subject with plenty of information can overwhelm someone conducting a simple web search. Millions of search results make selection difficult.

To resolve this difficulty for home chefs, Yummly created a recipe search engine for easily finding a delicious creation. The company’s website compiles recipes from popular sites and simplifies browsing and searching for anything the user finds tempting. Recipes from multiple sources are collected and categorized on the site.

Yummly deploys a semantic search combined with filters that allow finding something sweet or spicy. Users can also screen results based upon such factors as nutritional value, meal price, or trusted sources on the internet. This contrasts Yummly with typical general web searches that merely show the most viewed content.

In addition, unlike the majority of recipes posted online, all search results on Yummly state the nutritional facts for every preparation. Another distinctive aspect of the offerings is that users can quickly reduce or increase the number of portions a recipe produces. No need for the cook to calculate adjustments based upon how many people are being fed from the meal.

In March 2012, Yummly announced that it has raised $6,000,000 of funding by outside investors. This follows $1,850,000 of seed money the company obtained in late 2010. The two-year-old corporation plans to deploy the new funding for staff additions and further product development. That will likely give the site more visual appeal with plenty of pictures that keep recipe hounds lingering longer.

Yummly reports that it has 4 million unique visitors per month. The company also has a Facebook application that handles traffic from 1.4 million subscribers on that platform. According to Yummly management, referrals on Facebook increased the number of visitors by 75 percent since the app was launched in 2011.

The direction Yummly is now traveling entails finding new ways to enhance revenue from its popularity.