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.
I don't have any direct proof that recipe sites are doing this. I only look at just how many "stories" there are, and how many recipes. There just looks like too much writing. And it too is also very formulaic.
And it's also 'if I was to do a recipe site, I'd use a text generator'
Sounds cheaper than paying a freelancer $0.025 per word, too.
I suppose if you were just starting a blogspam recipe site, you could initially pay freelancers for the first articles, and use them as your training corpus. But since this sort of templated recipe site is already evil, just scrape all the other recipe sites and use their articles as your corpus.
"When we vacationed in { madlib( international_city ) }, we ate a { r.Name }, and it was delicious. When we returned home, we tried to recreate the recipe, but it was never quite right. After months of trying, it's finally perfect."
"As a child, I remember my grandmother making { r.Name } and eating it with all my cousins. It was her secret recipe. She never told anyone. When she died, we were all very sad because we thought the recipe was gone forever. But I found this in her old { madlib( noun ) }, and now I'm the most popular cousin at the reunion."
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.