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Show HN: OnlyRecipe.app – Remove clutter from recipe sites

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Re: Show HN: OnlyRecipe.app – Remove clutter from recipe sites

#11

Post by 2bitencryption »

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"?

Re: Show HN: OnlyRecipe.app – Remove clutter from recipe sites

#12

Post by adwww »

Anyone know why this life story rubbish seems particularly acute on recipe websites?

I get the authors are doing it to boost Google rankings. But why do I only see it on cooking blogs, and not on blogs about cycling, DIY, programming, urbanism, whatever else I'm searching....

Not many tech blogs start with a 4 page life history before showing me the code snippet I'm looking for.

Re: Show HN: OnlyRecipe.app – Remove clutter from recipe sites

#14

Post by weird-eye-issue »

logifail wrote: post #7
AwkwardPanda wrote: post #2

It can get frustrating skimming through text walls just to find the recipe on blogs/sites. Authors do it to get high ranking on Google. You can use OnlyRecipe.app to extract the recipe information. It works on almost all sites/blogs which follow a recipe standard when they post. You can also save it to your phone directly using the app. Scan recipe QR code using your phone camera and voila. Android: https://play.goog…

> Authors do it to get high ranking on Google [..] I believe it's more likely that it's to do with whether you can or can't copyright a listing of ingredients and method. If you add enough of a story, you definitely can.

No. As somebody who pays recipe creators and publishes recipes this is just wrong.

The recipe is separate from the text that accompanies it

Re: Show HN: OnlyRecipe.app – Remove clutter from recipe sites

#16

Post by zffr »

logifail wrote: post #7
AwkwardPanda wrote: post #2

It can get frustrating skimming through text walls just to find the recipe on blogs/sites. Authors do it to get high ranking on Google. You can use OnlyRecipe.app to extract the recipe information. It works on almost all sites/blogs which follow a recipe standard when they post. You can also save it to your phone directly using the app. Scan recipe QR code using your phone camera and voila. Android: https://play.goog…

> Authors do it to get high ranking on Google [..] I believe it's more likely that it's to do with whether you can or can't copyright a listing of ingredients and method. If you add enough of a story, you definitely can.

Could be wrong, but I thought it was so that you spend more time on their website and have a chance to see more ads

Re: Show HN: OnlyRecipe.app – Remove clutter from recipe sites

#17

Post by dagurp »

switzer wrote: post #10

Since OnlyRecipe.app is already parsing the recipe site, it would be a great feature to allow conversion to weights from volume (e.g. show 120g of flour vs. 1c of flour). Also, allow someone to double (or 1.5x...) the recipe as well, and have all measures double in the recipe!

A choice between metric and imperial would be nice too

Re: Show HN: OnlyRecipe.app – Remove clutter from recipe sites

#18

Post by Rygian »

2bitencryption wrote: post #11

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 - any…

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.

[1] https://www.copyrightlaws.com/copyright-protection-recipes/

Re: Show HN: OnlyRecipe.app – Remove clutter from recipe sites

#20

Post by joshgachnang »

2bitencryption wrote: post #11

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 - any…

People scroll more, so higher engagement and lower bounce rate metrics with the site (which I think helps with search ranking)
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