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Scraping Recipe Websites

benawad.com

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Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#101

Post by scrozier »

pfarrell wrote: post #28
pjc50 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having thought about this and my own use of cookbooks as loose inspiration rather than actually to follow in detail, I have come to the conclusion that the "fluff" is what most of the recipe-reading public want. In particular, the fluff has value even if you never cook the recipe! Which saves a lot of time and inconvenience on your part while still giving the same warm fluffy feelings. Actual "I have these things and…

It happened to me. When I quizzed my grandmother for her beloved chocolate chip cookies recipe, I felt like being entrusted with a huge family secret. Nope. Toll House cookie recipe (which is on the back of every package) with an extra quarter cup of flour XD.

I read long ago that you can/should always trust recipes printed on manufacturer's packages; after all, they've chosen them to stake their ingredients' reputations on.

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#102

Post by sethammons »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #92
marsRoverDev wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're being rightly trashed because it's a SEO tactic and nothing more. Between the preamble ranking them higher and Adsense requiring "substance" in order to monetise the page, there is a systematic issue that's leading to what is essentially useless information to what I would say is the majority of people. They're very welcome to write their life story, but I bet if google changed their algorithm slightly you'd…

My god this level of cynicism is such an eyeroll. HNers writhing over each other to be the most cynical and dismissive. For fun, can you link me to a highly ranked recipe page with a bullshit SEO story on it in line with "the camping trip in North Dakota when Susan's husband first discovered his love of homemade sour cream"?

Searched Beef Stroganoff Recipe. Result 1 from Betty Crocker was good. Here is the 2nd result:

https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/easy-beef-stroganoff-recipe/

You have to scroll halfway down to get your ingredients list after learning that her husband is a vegetarian, getting a history of the author cooking mostly plants before anyway, getting a lesson on what egg noodles are and, finally, the ingredients.

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#103

Post by scrollaway »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #92
marsRoverDev wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're being rightly trashed because it's a SEO tactic and nothing more. Between the preamble ranking them higher and Adsense requiring "substance" in order to monetise the page, there is a systematic issue that's leading to what is essentially useless information to what I would say is the majority of people. They're very welcome to write their life story, but I bet if google changed their algorithm slightly you'd…

My god this level of cynicism is such an eyeroll. HNers writhing over each other to be the most cynical and dismissive. For fun, can you link me to a highly ranked recipe page with a bullshit SEO story on it in line with "the camping trip in North Dakota when Susan's husband first discovered his love of homemade sour cream"?

A few comment above yours is this link talking about the healing power of cooking after 9/11: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017089-maple-shortbread...

Two days ago, I made this absolutely delicious "5 minute tiramisu": https://wishesndishes.com/5-minute-tiramasu-dip/ - That page doubles as a sponsored article, too (see disclaimer).

But just to prove your point and make you happy, and also because I'm hungry, I googled "sushi recipe idea" and clicked the first link that, without fail, talks about the very special valentine's day Tom^Wthe author and her husband spent years ago and how sushi is now a tradition.

https://www.fifteenspatulas.com/homemade-sushi/

This isn't a cynical thing. Go to fiverr.com and search for "write recipes". Here's the first result that comes up when doing that: https://www.fiverr.com/francosalzillo/write-text-around-a-re...

That's the more professional version of it. The guy's highly rated and it looks like it's his actual job.

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#104

Post by greglindahl »

AnonC wrote: post #44
anticsapp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't validate this but have been told this by multiple authors and SEO professionals. So it's anecdotal. One blogger apologized to me and told me she was embarrassed doing it but it's an industry practice. She explained it's because other recipe sites use automated scraping tools and republish their recipes in an effort to outrank original authors. The personal fluff helps slow them down. Also, a lot of recipes ar…

Thanks. This makes sense. I was wondering what these fluff pieces have to do with SEO, because surely the search engines aren’t monitoring all users and how long they spend on each page in order to rank the usefulness of the content in their search results. Bounce rates and how long a visitor stays on a page matter for those who own the sites and/or do some sort of marketing on them (ads, their own products, their se…

Yes, search engines monitor result clicks, bounce rates, dwell times, etc. They do affect ranking. And if you have Google analytics on your recipe site, Google has even more data about it.

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#105

Post by goatforce5 »

tmountain wrote: post #6
kmbfjr wrote: post #5

But how will I read about "Dakota", an avid yoga enthusiast who just happens to be a mom, who enjoys making healthy and savory meals for her family while blogging? Seriously, I hope this spells an end to the Google ranking imposed nonsense that makes the simple act of searching for a recipe so insufferable.

It's a running joke in our house. I start off wanting to make some mashed potatoes, and time and time again, I have to suffer through someone's life story--the camping trip in North Dakota when Susan's husband first discovered his love of homemade sour cream--etc. Makes me wonder if a super barebones recipe site that literally just has recipes and absolutely no fluff would be something people would gravitate towards.

I've had good luck with recipes from https://www.taste.com.au/ and https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/

Alternatively, if you want super barebones, go buy a copy of Escoffier's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_guide_culinaire (or an English translation thereof). It's arguably the definitive cookbook and the recipes are extremely terse, some just a couple of lines long. (e.g. "Take recipe A and recipe B, substituting X for Y.")

"Escoffier's introduction to the first edition explains his intention that Le Guide culinaire be used toward the education of the younger generation of cooks. This usage of the book still holds today; many culinary schools still use it as their culinary textbook. Its style is to give recipes as brief descriptions and to assume that the reader either knows or can look up the keywords in the description."

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#106

Post by saadalem »

sunsetMurk wrote: post #34
saadalem wrote: post #25

Next level : Shazam for cooking shows.

That'd be sweet for YouTube videos! I watch so many food/cooking YouTube videos.

That's the point : Similar to Shazam for music, you would build a mobile app that would use voice recognition to identify the cooking show and give you the recipe. Additionally you could find a restaurant that makes something similar and offer to have it delivered for a fee.

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#107

Post by mark_l_watson »

Hey Ben, thanks for that write up! You may not have time for this, but your article and the intersection of food/recipes and computer science would make a good book, at least I would read it.

I wrote [1] about 12 years ago in Clojure because for health reasons I had to track my intake of vitamin K, then decided to track all nutrients in the USDA nutrition database. I am working on a semantic web product (with another semantic product in planning) but maybe the end of this year will get to rewriting my food web app in Common Lisp and as a macOS app. I am adding a link to your article and these comments here to my notes for that project. Useful stuff.

[1] http://cookingspace.com

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#108

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #67
scrollaway wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a sweet world view, but the truth is that the majority of these cooking sites are filling in content for SEO and ad purposes, and the "stories" are fictions written by Tom, a 22 year old freelancer who isn't a yoga enthusiast but is just trying to make ends meet at 3¢/word.

And, the real farce is that Google mistakenly sees all that scrolling up and down the page, looking for the recipe as 'engagement' and "Dwell time".

Is that mistaken? Does no one click on ads on the page while doing this?

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#109

Post by ghaff »

Guest0918231 wrote: post #100
wastedhours wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's gone to extremes now, but to be honest - if someone wants to blog and post a recipe at the same time, that's their prerogative? Some people actually enjoy reading those things too. There's a place for straight recipe sites, and a place for personal word-vomit blogs with a recipe at the bottom. The web would be a sad place if you were only allowed to write your recipes in LaTeX.

Yes, they can do whatever they desire. The issue is when people are required to write life stories and superfluous content not because that's the direction they want to go, and not because it's appealing to their target audience, but because it's the only way they can rank well on Google. On the user side if you only want straightforward recipes, you're out of luck, because they're never going to be near the top of t…

>The issue is when people are required to write life stories and superfluous content not because that's the direction they want to go, and not because it's appealing to their target audience, but because it's the only way they can rank well on Google.

Citation needed. When I do a search on, say, Wiener Schnitzel (which I made last night) it looks to me as if the top searches are pretty to the point. Honestly, I tend to want some context for a recipe other than just a list of ingredients and some directions.

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#110

Post by GrantSolar »

I've been working on something similar for the past couple of days, but the trouble comes with wanting static types. There are a few projects out there that offer either a microdata parser, or types derived from schema.org but nothing that combines the two as yet
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