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Scraping Recipe Websites

benawad.com

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Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#151

Post by julianeon »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #35
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.

My understanding of why there's a life story copy at the top of recipes is that a recipe is not copyrightable, but a story is. And, an AI can generate a story one time relatively easy. https://lizerbramlaw.com/2015/04/07/copyright-protect-recipe...

My understanding was that it happened more organically.

When I see a story at the top of a page, what I feel like I'm really seeing, most of the time, is an attempt by a nano-influencer, or really just an average person, to build a brand.

You could read 100 recipes from a person that included no details about themselves, then see their name on a blog and not even realize it was them.

But if the story is from the Pioneer Woman, and now you know a bit about her family, you might be more receptive to buying her cookbook, or signing up for her subscription newsletter, or watching her TV show.

Or, more realistically, in the other direction: you could sell Netflix on a show about you based on the number of recipes people view each month, that have your life story embedded in them.

So, over time, you end up with the current situation, as infinitely many people attempt to climb the ranks.

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#153

Post by syntaxing »

selecsosi wrote: post #32

I highly useful tool in my household for dealing with the SEO/tracking scourge that recipe blogs have become is https://www.paprikaapp.com/ . Hoping someday to have some spare time to integrate this with https://grocy.info/ and have a pipeline for recipe -> preparation automation.

How much time did/do you spend for home grocery management? I'm super interested in doing this for my family but I'm worried I won't have time to maintain it.

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#155

Post by jackewiehose »

Symbiote wrote: post #114
jackewiehose wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 In German there's chefkoch.de. It's full of ads but its core is basically a big DB of user-submitted recipes without fluff. Don't you have something like that in English?

I usually add "BBC" to my search term, which ① gets a straightforward page and ② ensures the measurements and oven temperatures will be metric. The further from the UK one is, the less useful this is. The measurements should only be a problem in the US and Canada, but common ingredients can change -- e.g. the fat content of cream, or whether canned tomatoes are salted or sweetened. Also, if you're from the rest of th…

> I usually add "BBC" to my search term

Do you mean at chefkoch- or google-search?

Yes, recipes are very hard to translate. For example I don't know what "cream" is and I never want extra sugar or salt in canned tomatoes.

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#156

Post by selecsosi »

syntaxing wrote: post #153
selecsosi wrote: post #32

I highly useful tool in my household for dealing with the SEO/tracking scourge that recipe blogs have become is https://www.paprikaapp.com/ . Hoping someday to have some spare time to integrate this with https://grocy.info/ and have a pipeline for recipe -> preparation automation.

How much time did/do you spend for home grocery management? I'm super interested in doing this for my family but I'm worried I won't have time to maintain it.

Not as much as I'd like to but more time on repetitive tasks then desired at the same time. I.e. I'd like to do more cooking when I know an ingredient might be getting close to expiration (that damn chicken breasts I let thaw but then forgot to cook because we ended up ordering out for the night) vs making a shopping list and doing 40 checks of how much do we have, what can we make, what did we make recently we either enjoyed and want to try again and tweak, and not repeating meals.

All of that tracking of what my partner and I are making, ingredients, tweaks, etc... is almost entirely in my head or quickly put together google sheets that are categorized but difficult to analyze in any historical fashion.

I'd rather just be better tracking my actions at point of interaction with the goods and free up more time for analytical development and more longitudinal reflection.

I really started focusing on my cooking skills about 4, 5 years ago and have appreciated the result of those efforts. A lot of chef skills I appreciate is the ability to improvise and combine what's around into an incredible dish and I think that something that let my data side push usage and expiration as inputs to that decisioning (arrowroot flour been in there for a year, I should make those fried shrimp we had when we were on whole30).

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#157

Post by selecsosi »

syntaxing wrote: post #153
selecsosi wrote: post #32

I highly useful tool in my household for dealing with the SEO/tracking scourge that recipe blogs have become is https://www.paprikaapp.com/ . Hoping someday to have some spare time to integrate this with https://grocy.info/ and have a pipeline for recipe -> preparation automation.

How much time did/do you spend for home grocery management? I'm super interested in doing this for my family but I'm worried I won't have time to maintain it.

This is also why I love thin shims over already effective solutions

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#158

Post by DoreenMichele »

scrollaway wrote: post #43
thawaway1837 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Why doesn’t everyone who is putting information out there for free not cater to exactly my needs”. What an utter load of bollocks. These are people who are creating something that they enjoy doing and giving you information you apparently need for free. I don’t understand why anyone would trash their desire to write something that is personal and/or interesting to them about it. And that’s setting aside that these u…

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.

Tom, a 22 year old freelancer who isn't a yoga enthusiast but is just trying to make ends meet at 3¢/word.

Or Doreen, a 54 year old freelancer who isn't a yoga enthusiast but is trying to make ends meet at something under 3¢/word.

I haven't actually written for the site in question. I'm not trying to imply that I have. More like saying "Yeah, this is absolutely a thing."

And it's a thing in part because my actual original blogging that's the real deal doesn't get enough tips and Patreon supporters. If people want to see less content marketing to get ad revenue and more quality writing aimed at providing something fresh, they should be looking for independent authors to support whose writing they actually like.

I was providing original content written entirely by me for years before I began doing freelance writing. I would have likely never become a freelance writer if people had been willing to leave tips, promote my writing, engage with me so I would have a better idea of what to provide for my audience and so forth.

If you don't like what's on the internet, go "look in the mirror" so to speak. I've been on Hacker News nearly 11 years and was literally homeless for nearly six of that while people around here told me "Go get a real job. Writing doesn't pay. Your expectation that your writing should be capable of providing a living wage is just silly talk."

It's not so-called market forces at work. It's human choice and those choices are rooted in what we value and all this. If this world isn't the world folks want to see, they can make other choices more in line with what they claim they want instead of "being traffic" while complaining about it.

(Edit: For the record: Most of my freelance writing is content for small business sites and I don't feel the tiniest bit of regret. I like working for a paid service and I blog about that too and get accused of the site being content marketing when it absolutely isn't. http://writepay.blogspot.com/)

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#159

Post by twodayslate »

vitiell0 wrote: post #81
selecsosi wrote: post #32

I highly useful tool in my household for dealing with the SEO/tracking scourge that recipe blogs have become is https://www.paprikaapp.com/ . Hoping someday to have some spare time to integrate this with https://grocy.info/ and have a pipeline for recipe -> preparation automation.

You might want to checkout an app I built called Cooklist. It has the features of Paprika + Grocy + Instacart + Pinterest all in one. https://cooklist.co

One reason I bought Paprika is that it is a one-time-purchase. Do you have any thoughts on offering that?

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#160

Post by benawad »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #128
selecsosi wrote: post #32

I highly useful tool in my household for dealing with the SEO/tracking scourge that recipe blogs have become is https://www.paprikaapp.com/ . Hoping someday to have some spare time to integrate this with https://grocy.info/ and have a pipeline for recipe -> preparation automation.

I love Paprika, but what keeps frustrating me is the inability to share recipes with my partner. I can Airdrop a single recipe to her, but doing this for all of them, one byone, super tedious, and then she makes some changes which I'd like to have too, and there seems to be no reliable way to get her changes back on my devices. It's all the more frustrating as Paprika does sync really well, but apparently just within…

If you're interested in switching, http://www.mysaffronapp.com/ has a bulk import from Paprika and you'd be able to share an account with your partner.
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