Recipe Plugin for TYPO3

Recipes without Schema.org markup give away the most valuable positions in Google’s results

Recipe searches are one of the few areas where Google shows rich snippets with image, rating, cooking time and calories. Websites without correct Schema.org Recipe markup appear as a plain blue link beneath the visually dominant rich results. The TYPO3 recipe extension structures recipes with every field Google expects for rich snippets: ingredients, preparation steps, nutrition information, servings, preparation time and difficulty. The Schema.org markup is output automatically in JSON-LD format, without editors having to touch any HTML.

For food blogs, publishers with recipe sections and food manufacturers with recipe databases, this is the difference between being visible and being invisible in Google Search.

Typical use cases include food blogs, product websites and health portals

The most common scenario is the food blog or online magazine with a recipe section. A publisher releases five new recipes every week. Each recipe is created in the TYPO3 backend as a structured record: title, description, ingredient list with quantities, preparation steps as a numbered list, times (preparation, cooking, total), nutrition information per serving and a cover image. From this, the extension generates a detail page with correct Schema.org markup. In the search results, Google then shows the image, the star rating, the total time and the calorie count.

A second scenario is the product website of a food manufacturer. An olive oil producer shows matching recipes for each product. The recipes link to the product, and the product links to the recipes. This two-way linking strengthens both the product page and the recipe page in Google’s assessment.

The third scenario is health portals and nutrition counseling. Here the nutrition information takes center stage. A diabetes portal shows recipes with carbohydrate exchanges (known in Germany as bread units), glycemic index and carbohydrates per serving. The extension supports custom fields, so these medically relevant values can be captured as structured data and displayed prominently in the frontend.

The technical architecture uses Extbase records with automatic JSON-LD output

The extension registers its own record type for recipes in the TYPO3 database. Each record contains fields for title, description, ingredients (as inline relational records), steps (as a sortable list), times (prepTime, cookTime and totalTime in ISO 8601 format), nutrition information (calories, fat, carbohydrates, protein) and images via FAL.

Frontend rendering runs through Fluid templates that present the recipe as an HTML page and at the same time write a JSON-LD script tag with the Schema.org/Recipe markup into the page head. The markup follows Google’s specification: name, image, author, datePublished, description, prepTime, cookTime, totalTime, recipeYield, recipeIngredient, recipeInstructions and nutrition.

The list view shows recipes as tiles with image, title, total time and rating. Filters by category (starter, main course, dessert), diet (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free) and preparation time can be configured via TypoScript.

Common problems involve missing required fields and invalid time formats

The biggest obstacle to rich snippet display is missing required fields. Google requires at least name and image and also recommends recipeInstructions. If an editor creates a recipe without an image, the Schema.org markup is still output, but Google shows no rich snippet. The fix: enable required-field validation in the TYPO3 backend so that a recipe cannot be saved without an image and at least one preparation step.

The second problem is invalid time formats. Schema.org expects an ISO 8601 duration (PT30M for 30 minutes, PT1H15M for 1 hour 15 minutes). If the extension does not correctly convert an editor’s input of “30 min” into PT30M, validation in Google’s Rich Results Test fails. Most recipe extensions therefore offer separate input fields for hours and minutes, which are converted to ISO 8601 internally.

The third topic is duplicate content for recipes embedded on several pages. If the same recipe is shown in full on both the category page and the detail page, two pages end up with identical Schema.org markup, and Google treats this as a duplicate. The fix: show only teasers on category pages and output the full Schema.org markup exclusively on the detail page.

The extension runs on TYPO3 v11 and v12, while v13 requires an Extbase update

Recipe extensions in the TYPO3 ecosystem are maintained by various providers. Actively maintained extensions are compatible with TYPO3 v12. For TYPO3 v13, adjustments to the Extbase model configuration and the TCA definitions are typically needed, because v13 removed some outdated TCA types. For recipe websites, Gosign recommends validating the Schema.org output with Google’s Rich Results Test after every TYPO3 update to make sure the markup quality holds.