What is the reason that every single recipe site, without fail, follows this same horrible pattern?
I.e. the twenty paragraph "When I was a child growing up in Atlanta..." followed by a crappy in-house video player followed by, finally, the actual recipe?
My assumption is SEO? For some reason, Google must really like having tons of text on your page, and dislikes simple "here's the recipe"? etc?
Second question - anyone who has searched for recipes also knows that Google will parse out any star rating from the recipe page and show it alongside the results. Which is obviously meaningless because comparing 4.5 stars from grandmas-cooking.net to 4.5 stars from foodnetwork.com is apples-to-oranges. So what's to stop me from simply faking my own star system, then presenting it on my website so that google picks it up in its results? And what triggers Google to look for a star rating? Could I update my tech blog to have a star rating and Google will show it? Or is it limited to keywords like "recipe"?
Because "Recipes" are one of about a dozen categories for which google defines special Structure Data formats, which allows presumably-high-clickthrough results page features like the rich media carousel previews, etc. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/structure...
If you want to know what categories of things will have especially horrendous (ie clickbait-optimized-to-hell) results, look at the other things that google encourages developers to semantically tag and compete for use of the shiny results page features. A couple interesting ones:
Ecommerce (monetizable sales):
- Books
- Review snippet
- Software app
- Events
Google Maps data ingestion:
- Local Business
Youtube previews:
- Video
- Movie
Job search:
- Employer Aggregate Rating
- Estimated salary
- Job Posting
Knowledge graph:
- COVID-19 announcements (ooo, topical!)
- Dataset
- FAQ
- Fact Check
Recipes are something that people who search for recipes do several times a week, so the algorithms identified this as a Thing with High DAU's. Semantic tags then makes it easier to identify "this is a recipe page", but that means for such a crowded category it's a race to the bottom with optimization and ad-stuffing (more life story == more inline ad blocks).
Unfortunately, it's against google's interest to promote to-the-point recipe pages that have fewer embedded AdWords blocks.
Projects like OP probably just parse out the semantic tags and throw away the rest of the content. This could easily be a browser extension.
Note that I have adblocker so I don't know how many ads you see and I can't judge the quality as well, buy at least the sites are quite usable. I'd be more pissed off by a missing ingredient than having to scroll a screen or two.
The lasagne recipe page would be one I count as bad. There's a lot of useless text before the recipe. The other two result pages are good.
Interesting enough, the big name recipe sites: Allrecipes, food network, NYTimes, binging with babish etc. all are short and to the point. But for some reason the crappy recipe sites outperform them on Google.
The Lasagna recipe is an independent cooking blogger (note the "Hi there, I'm Holly!" in the top-right corner). Food Network, Allrecipes, Tegel, and other sites mentioned are not promoting a specific person, but an entire brand. Babish is the exception to this rule, but he "changed the game" by going for YouTube instead of blogs.
Although the optimization is infuriating, in my search to become a decent cook, I have found more success following specific writers instead of a top result/highest rated meal. Many of these writers self-promote (and cross-promote) on sites with the same template as spendwithpennies.com
I wouldn't be surprised if that annoying SEO template was designed in collaboration with Cookbook publishers. The "anecdote before recipe" style was made famous in Irma S. Rombauer's Joy of Cooking, and took on a variety of forms throughout the 20th century.
This is the kind of recipe I see most often when searching for recipes. I wonder whether GP was a little lucky with his/her three links. (The lasagna recipe was an example of an SEO'd recipe.)
> Note that I have adblocker so I don't know how many ads you see
Be careful. I also have an ad blocker and sent a fun link to my mom a friend had sent me and she saw Alllllllllll the ads. It was not a fun link for her. Didn’t even think of it before sending.
It's SEO. Once a SEO expert was showing me user heatmaps on his popular website's articles. The users completely ignored 90% of the content and of the text of a page. I asked him why so many parts of the text were ignored by the users and his answer was "oh, that text is not for the users, it's for google". The literally paid writers to write articles way longer than needed solely to satisfy Google algorithms. The worst part is that it worked and they earned a lot of money from it.
And as a result google search in general has been going downhill for the last 5 years. It's getting so bad, that I've openly been trying other search engines. Unfurtunately, duckduckgo has the same problem. I'm keeping an eye out for other search engines to do most of my searches.
I wonder how Google would respond to a site that had a big arrow pointing to that text with a "This is just to quiet google. Click here to jump the the recipe."
Yet another reason the search monopoly we find ourselves in is so harmful. If there were even 2 or 3 search engines with substantial (20%+) market share SEO would have to try to triangulate for multiple competing measures of page quality - hopefully landing on something that resembles a passable user experience. Instead everyone in SEO is laser-focused on the singular quirks of Google's Page Rank.
Yes. I worked at a site that had an SEO-obsessed boss and basically the keywords, placement of keywords, formatting of the page, everything...all affected SEO.
However, that all likely paled in comparison to him gaming the system by paying to host separate sites that linked back to his in an effort to boost legitimacy during the times when SEO was a make or break thing.
It's definitely an arms race. Sort of like tax avoidance. As long as you have search engines ordering results, I guess you'll have people who seek to game the results. The question for me is whether what Google does can be improved upon. I think we can do much better.
That only covers backlinks and authority, it's just one piece of the puzzle. Ironically, that's called a "black-hat" way of obtaining backlinks and authority. The "white-hat" way is to go to legit websites and purchase links, literally pay them to link your website. This is a great example of what's considered "ethical" in SEO
A better measure as to whether the user found what they were looking for would be if Google checked if the user continues browsing through subsequent search results or not.
Google does check this. It’s called bounce rate and is just one piece of the SEO puzzle. Keeping users on your site longer before they “bounce” is another, so these sites are incentivized to keep you on the page for as long as possible because they know that it’s unlikely for a user to find the exact recipe they are looking for.
At this level of optimization even the 0.25s spent scrolling past a story is enough to make a difference... this is like "competitive swimmers shaving off their body hair" level SEO.
For me, at least, I typically don't follow the recipe. Very rarely am I looking for cooking instruction. I'm familiar enough with most typical cooking techniques that ingredient list and proportions, plus sometimes a quick glance at the steps, is all I need to get the job done. I'm usually modifying the ingredients on the fly as I cook the dish anyway.
When I am looking for cooking instruction, I find my existing library of trusted cookbooks to have a much better signal to noise ratio than Googled recipes sites on the web.
I wish there were some “intermediate” websites for cooking. There seems to be a missing middle, where I don’t know exactly to do, but know enough basics to only meed a little bit of direction.
Ie, not step by step, but more general. Let me improvise, but still guide me.
Placing recipes on the bottom and behind “click to show” type features forces users to remain on your site for a longer period of time. This makes it appear to Google that users are more “engaged” on your website because it takes longer for them to bounce in the cases where the recipe isn’t what they are looking for.
I do front-end dev for a high-volume recipe site and our multivariate tests mostly confirm the opposite. Simpler pages rank higher (and users report higher satisfaction with the product). Core Web Vitals changed the way a lot of things work, how long ago were you given this advice?
A while back (two years?). The thing is, user were extremely satisfied by the product. The users came to the website for a comparison table (which was at the top), used the information, clicked a link on the table and then exited the website. The rest of the page was useless, most won't even scroll. But still they needed it for a ton of SEO reasons (keyword density, semantic structure and complexity, internal and external linking).
The company was working on an extremely competitive niche and it was crushing it (multi-million dollar ad revenue), so I think they knew what were doing.
The copyright around the recipe itself is a challenging issue [1], so a simple way of guaranteeing that the site is not scrapped and published elsewhere verbatim is to include also non-recipe material that falls more clearly under copyright law.
I always see this as a stated reason, but I'm skeptical unless it's cargo-culting like "no copyright intended" on YouTube videos (but this is a lot more work). I can't see Adam and Joanne [1] or Holly [2] suing for copyright because when someone stole their Frito Pie recipe and left off the story at top. Especially, when they both have Google-defined tags to grab only the recipe and ingredients. As others have mentioned, the bigger sites (Allrecipes, food network, NYTimes, binging with babish etc.) tend not do the story thing.
Do you have any other info on copyright as a reason?
Not sure about the US or the EU in general, but in Germany at least databases - even if they solely consist of trivial, non-copyrightable data - are still copyrighted. This law was put into place after a company in Germany just hired people to type of physical copies of Phonebooks and the yellowpages, and sold a "phonebook" on CD. A name+phonenumber pair isn't copyrightable, but the collection as a whole is (at least now).
In the US, the facts in a phone book (names, numbers, addresses) are not copyrightable and neither is the collection. However, see the bit at the end about compilations.
I wonder whether "fake facts" (bogus names, numbers, addresses) are copyrightable. If they are, they can be used to give copyright protection to a collection even when the bulk of the collection isn't copyrightable.
Those fake facts are a thing and have a name [0], they are placed into phonebooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias etc. to detect copyright violations (i.e. somebody else stealing your compilation).
> I wonder whether "fake facts" (bogus names, numbers, addresses) are copyrightable.
This has, unfortunately, been upheld on occasion. True damages from copying such false entries would be nonexistent, naturally, but statutory damages are blind to such trivialities as justice or proportionality.
Morally speaking, anything presented as fact (including entries in a phone book or notations on a map) should be treated as fact and thus not copyrightable. Something along the lines of estoppel should prevent one from claiming that they are providing a database of facts and then suing the recipient for reproducing copyrightable "creative elements" which don't belong there. Also, selling someone a database of "facts" with deliberate fictitious entries mixed in which are not specifically labeled as such should be classified as fraud and open the publisher up to liability should anyone suffer the slightest harm due to the false entries.
* database rights, which are similar to but distinct from copyright; in particular they last for only 15 years;
* copyright in a particular collection of public-domain things.
Case C-304/07 Directmedia Publishing GmbH v Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, which was about an anthology of poems, seems to have involved both things. See if you can make sense of it because I'm not sure I can!
> I.e. the twenty paragraph "When I was a child growing up in Atlanta..." followed by a crappy in-house video player followed by, finally, the actual recipe?
> My assumption is SEO? For some reason, Google must really like having tons of text on your page, and dislikes simple "here's the recipe"? etc?
Cookbooks that sell well usually have some introductory text for every recipe. The best cookbooks use this intro to describe unusual techniques or flavor combinations in the recipe, so the intro text in such books can be really helpful and is sometimes critical to getting the recipe right the first time you try to make it. The only cookbook I own that doesn't have intro text for each recipe is a culinary school textbook, so the authors felt safe assuming a certain level of familiarity with the terms and techniques used.
OG food blogs like Smitten Kitchen and David Lebovitz emulated the classic cookbook style, and, not surprisingly, those authors have gone on to make a lot of money writing traditional cookbooks. Contemporary food blogs tend to try to emulate older, successful blogs (maybe because Google somehow boosted recipes with intro text back when such text was usually helpful?) but mostly come off as AI-generated garbage text, made just long enough to create a couple scroll events and artificially lower a site's bounce rate.
Ratings for recipes never make sense anyway because if one reads the reviews they're always of the sort, "I LOVE THIS RECIPE! I used buttermilk instead of Milk, doubled the sugar, used almond extract instead of vanilla. This recipe is AMAZING!"
Those reviews are more useful that the recipes. If I am missing one ingredient I have more confidence in trying a substitute if someone else has before me (I've messed a few recipes up with a bad substitute). sometimes I'll look at the substitution and think that sounds better even though I have everything for the original (if I've made this before I'm more likely to do this for variety).
The problem is once you change the ingredients, you're not making the same recipe. Sure the alternatives may turn out better, but rate the original a 1 star and then list what changes you made.
> I.e. the twenty paragraph "When I was a child growing up in Atlanta..." followed by a crappy in-house video player followed by, finally, the actual recipe?
As a child growing up outside of Atlanta, this is how we were typically taught recipes.
"One day, when you're sharing this recipe on a mass communication network that doesn't exist today, make sure to (1) mention that you're from Atlanta & (2) include a story about your children / partner / family."
My understanding is there are 3 reasons.
1)The authors want to build a brand for themselves rather than just provide you with recipes. This helps to get further opportunities for them and differentiates their cookbook/site from others in a very crowded market
2)A lot of people read cookbooks as books rather than just when they are cooking and this philosophy seems to have been copied over to recipe sites
3)Copyright. Istr reading somewhere you can't copyright a recipe whereas you can pursue a claim against someone who plagiarises the non-obvious text parts. It's something like that.
The "listing of ingredients" and "simple set of directions" are not copyrightable in the US (I have no idea about other countries). Photographs, drawings, and background info such as explanations of how or why the recipe works may all be copyrightable though.
I also see similar WordPress themes appear on supposedly independent sites with individual authors. Similar down to the email sign-up popups.
I get that some WP themes are more popular than the bazillion available, but the consistency in look and feel between a Malaysian immigrant to New York cooking curries I know aren't that Malaysian and a stay at home mom in Ohio doing baking that may have been passed down by a great aunt that tweaked a King Arthur Flour recipe is often remarkable.
If you don't feel comfortable/confident getting into the code/markup to customize, you're probably going to pick something that looks "right" to you, which is then determined by what you see. Doesn't seem super remarkable to me?
Its annoying to me too. A lot of fluff. From what I remember, back around 2012, Google was facing a serious issue of content farms appearing in their results. These are sites that aggregate data and auto-generate articles about a myriad of topics. They were ruining search. So Google introduced a significant change to the way that they rank websites. They figured originality and authenticity was the key to identifying genuine sites. And how was this determined? Well, an article is written, it should contain a lot of text, more so and of better quality than an algorithm could write. And the content had to be original. If it was clear that the content was copy and pasted from somewhere else, then it was probably not original. So here we are, where a simple recipe has to tell the person's life story in order differentiate it from the junk of content farms. I am sure someone here remembers this Google change back then. It had a specific name. Everyone on the web who was concerned about SEO at the time was aware of it.
1. SEO. I've been recommended to have a ghostwriter write technical articles for me to increase my client base. Build enough of a cult following and you can be sure that your youtube channel, or next book has enough of an audience.
2. I think it also appeals to a certain audience. It makes them feel open minded to other cultures. There's an emotional bond forming with the story or the people in the story.
Don't forget that the average american speaks only one language, yet considers themselves as part of the country that is creating/keeping world peace and that at the same time the average american consumer spends more on average on consumer goods per capita than any other nation in the world. Add to that, that ad revenue is the US is also disproportionately higher than anywhere else.
Smitten Kitchen often has a few paragraphs before the recipe. I don't always read it, but I also don't hate it.
It helps she writes well and it seems to genuinely reflect the author's life--I think it started out as a personal blog with occasional recipes before becoming a recipe site with bloggy bits bolted on. The text is also fairly helpful, in that it sometimes describes less successful attempts cooking the same thing, or compares it with other dishes ("If you hate X, try [this] instead").
This may be a rare exception though--I agree that a lot of other recipe sites have tons of vacuous filler.
Smitten Kitchen was one of the OG food blogs that established the pattern that recipe spam websites are trying to emulate. Back in the aughts, searching for a recipe on Google was useful because they would prioritize "enriched" sites like Smitten Kitchen, David Lebovitz's blog, Orangette, The Wednesday Chef, etc., where the narrative portion of the recipe primarily established who the recipe would appeal to, tips on unusual techniques employed in the recipe, and sometimes a humanizing anecdote or two.
The format of Smitten Kitchen and David Lebovitz's blog have remained unchanged for about 15 years, probably because those authors used the success of their blogs to establish related revenue streams (mostly via bestselling cookbooks). I would be surprised if the blogs themselves still make much money, given how few display ads are included on each page.
I sometimes like to read the paragraphs to know why some things are done and possible substitutions, specially if I'm not going to make the recipe immediately. But when I want to make it, I really would love to have it separated from the text.
My wife and I collect cookbooks and cocktail recipe books. There are a handful of writers who have a compelling voice where I read more than just the ingredient list and instructions.
But for some random blog that I find while googling? Never.
My best possible guesses (note, not really based on any research into it but just theories).
- The ones that I have noticed do this, also tend to have a lot of ads. So maybe to both be able to show more ads (there is a limit of how many ads you can show if you just have a simple recipe, but add a book above it and you can show many more). Maybe also the ability to add referral links to talked about products?
- It seems like some of them are trying to build a community. They do the whole "tell me about your experience" thing that only generates more page views and "interaction". So maybe there are people that actually follow these blogs and feel like all of that story is personal?
- I am sure there is some SEO stuff going on here like others have said.
It's not just recipes. There are tones of questions I often search which have a very specific and short answer. E.g. "how many kangaroos are there in the world?".
Ideally I would expect a page with my question and a number with link to the source. However in the real world I get various pages with somehow related title and tons of text inside I don't need. Often times without the exact number I'm looking for.
I guess that most likely nobody wants to maintain such a resource since it might be hard to make it profitable. Still it might save a lot of time for collective humanity.
I've learned to only click on allrecipes.com all the others make it too hard to find the recipe I'm looking for. Please join me in rewarding the one good site that works. (note, the parent company was bought out this summer, the new owners may screw things up, if so punish them like all the others where you can't find the recipe)
Exactly. I've never been as frustrated with the modern web as I am when I try to find a recipe. It's the most infuriating experience. I'd pay money if I knew I could access a very large database of recipes, where I know I just get the recipe itself.
It's an infuriating experience indeed. I reached my breaking point a few months ago, and decided I was just done with googling recipes. After trying a few different highly regarded paid apps (recipe managers, NYT Cooking) and not finding quite what I was looking for, I caved and started compiling my own recipe database in Notion. My goal is to use this database exclusively for weekly meal planning, as well as for cooking up something on a whim. It's a habit change for sure, and required a bit of upfront work to seed the database, but so far, has proved to be successful. Overall, both meal planning and cooking itself have become more enjoyable!
Google weights time spent on site in rankings. If you bounce instantly back to the search results, obviously you didn’t find what you were looking for. If you stay for a while, maybe you did.
I.e. the twenty paragraph "When I was a child growing up in Atlanta..." followed by a crappy in-house video player followed by, finally, the actual recipe?
My assumption is SEO? For some reason, Google must really like having tons of text on your page, and dislikes simple "here's the recipe"? etc?
Second question - anyone who has searched for recipes also knows that Google will parse out any star rating from the recipe page and show it alongside the results. Which is obviously meaningless because comparing 4.5 stars from grandmas-cooking.net to 4.5 stars from foodnetwork.com is apples-to-oranges. So what's to stop me from simply faking my own star system, then presenting it on my website so that google picks it up in its results? And what triggers Google to look for a star rating? Could I update my tech blog to have a star rating and Google will show it? Or is it limited to keywords like "recipe"?