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Scraping Recipe Websites

benawad.com

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Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#181

Post by fulldecent2 »

I saw all the terrible SEOd recipe websites and my first thought was: I should make a better recipe website that is simpler and is better SEOd.

---

FIRST EXAMPLE:

How to cook chicken on a skillet

Step 1 -- get this much chicken [picture]

Step 2 -- cook on skillet for 5 minutes

OPTIONAL -- here are seasonings you may add [pictures]

RELATED:

- How to cook a lot of chicken on a skillet [LINK]

- How to fry chicken breast [LINK]

---

But then I didn't understand how any of these websites are making money so I didn't do it.

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#182

Post by kevindong »

I personally just find recipes, make it as written from the website, and then (if I actually like it), I'll convert it to be sane for actually following and output into Apple Notes.

What I mean by that is most recipes call for using wwwaaayyy more intermediary bowls/plates than actually required (e.g. if spices, chopped veggies, and minced garlic are going into the pot at the same time, there's no point in using three bowls) or list ingredients out of order of how you'd actually use them.

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#183

Post by RhodesianHunter »

fulldecent2 wrote: post #181

I saw all the terrible SEOd recipe websites and my first thought was: I should make a better recipe website that is simpler and is better SEOd. --- FIRST EXAMPLE: How to cook chicken on a skillet Step 1 -- get this much chicken [picture] Step 2 -- cook on skillet for 5 minutes OPTIONAL -- here are seasonings you may add [pictures] RELATED: - How to cook a lot of chicken on a skillet [LINK] - How to fry chicken breast…

The reason all of these websites are so terrible with the long winded intro-stories is precisely because they do better with SEO.

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#184

Post by logicslave »

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

Really sharp looking website

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#185

Post by zappo2938 »

joelrunyon wrote: post #166
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.

We built this at https://ultimatemealplans.com with an eye towards consistency & simplicity. You can - plan your meals for the week in seconds - generate your shopping list - exclude foods you don't like/want - checkout online with amazon fresh/instacart and get your groceries delivered. Happy to demo it for any HNers who want to give it a try.

I was a private yacht chef. I applied restaurant kitchen management to a boat galley. Since I've thought about writing a blog about home economics of managing the kitchen. It is so much more than recipes.

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#186

Post by nolroz »

chirau wrote: post #178

Is there any recipe tool out there that can do at least one of the following: 1) Scale the quantity of ingredients and cooking time as number of people to be served increases? 2) Tell me what dishes I can make with the ingredients I have?

I enjoyed the recipe scaling abilities of Gourmet: https://thinkle.github.io/gourmet/

You can also filter and search by ingredient, but that might be somewhat simplistic depending on what you had in mind.

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#187

Post by yepthatsreality »

phito wrote: post #132
memset wrote: post #129

Interesting! I wrote https://plainoldrecipe.com (open source!) to solve this, an inadvertently discovered many of the metadata tags described here. The irony is that the content is required for SEO purposes, but once you’ve landed on the page you don’t want to see it. I wonder if there would be a way to write SEO that only the google bot sees and hide it from humans...

Your header says "plan old recipe"

Which is just dripping with irony? serendipity?

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#188

Post by jurip »

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.

If a recipe is too hard to find, just move on. If there's a few paragraphs of things you don't care about before the recipe, press page down. Maybe let Dakota write what she wants on her own site.

One reason I haven't seen mentioned here for that personal content: it's also a question of building context and trust. If I go to Bon Appetit for a recipe, I know they've tested it a few times and it should be more or less OK even if I don't recognize the author. If I go to a barebones anonymous just-the-recipes site, I have no faith that it ever worked and if it did, it wasn't just a fluke and it was written down right.

Having some detail around a recipe from a previously unknown source allows me to build a connection to a persona in my head, genuine or otherwise. If a recipe doesn't work I'll know to avoid the site in the future. If it does work I can remember that connection and come back to the site again with some more confidence.

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#189

Post by biggestdummy »

partiallypro wrote: post #41

Be careful with this, some recipes are subject to copyright law. I think you can list ingredients of a recipe with no problem, but once you get to exact measurements and prep it somehow switches over to falling under copyright law. There used to be a bunch of open sourced recipe repos/databases...but almost all of them are gone.

Among other things, I am a cookbook author, so I know a fair bit about this.

Ingredient amounts are not subject to copyright protection. Any prose - intros, descriptions, instructions are covered by copyright the same way that any other book would be. So, yes, this kind of activity is likely in violation of copyright.

Let me also say that I find it a bit insulting that people who make a living creating IP (software) would be happy to disrespect the IP of these recipe authors. By taking the recipes from outside of the revenue source (a book, a banner ad, a cookie, whatever), you are stealing from the author and the publisher.

I make 25 cents on every book that is sold. So I don't actually care if you steal from me. The money is tiny. But it is a bit insulting when people - in my own living room, reading my copy of my book - decide that they want to take a picture of a recipe instead of buying a copy. It devalues the hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars that I sunk into the creation, cooking, and photography of the book.

So here's the moral of the story. Waiters should leave good tips because they know that waiters depend on tips. And IP creators should know better than to steal IP.

Re: Scraping Recipe Websites

#190

Post by ginko »

reaperducer wrote: post #89
SamBam wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely grown worse now, but I think that this originated from recipe sites that people actually used to follow, because the blogs were interesting and we got to know the writers, and what's changed is more that we're jumping to the first Google hit and we expect them just to grant us the information we wanted. There is a difference between opening up a recipe site, like a favorite blog, or the New York Times…

I think it's also about different types of recipe collections. There are cookbooks that are all recipes. This seems to be what the HN crowd is looking for when they search the internet. There are cookbooks where each recipe is accompanied by a little story. These seem to sell well, judging by the number of them that appear on bookstore shelves. And then there are cookbooks where all of the anecdotes are in the front…

>And then there are cookbooks where all of the anecdotes are in the front of the book and the recipes are in the back. These are the ones I like because I can easily find what I'm looking for, but can still read the background about a recipe, if I choose.

I inherited a series of Time Life cookbooks from my grandmother. They must have been printed in the 70s. Each of them essentially comes in two parts. A full size book with lots of pictures, introductions and visual guides and a small ring-bound booklet that's essentially all recipes. What I also find interesting about them is that many recipes are rather laborious and from scratch since they were written before having all that many kitchen appliances and pre-made ingredients.

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