[thawaway1837]

“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 usually make the recipes far more readable and interesting to the vast majority of people.

[scrollaway]

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.

[thorwasdfasdf]

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".

[mandelbrotwurst]

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

[thorwasdfasdf]

the algo thinks you're having a good time.

[DoreenMichele]

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/)

[csa]

This is so incredibly accurate.

[marsRoverDev]

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 see it disappear - and I'd say that would be a good thing.

[hombre_fatal]

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"?

[scrollaway]

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.

[jefftk]

Your first link is a recipe from 2001-09-19, which seems like strong evidence that it being written around 9/11 wasn't motivated by modern recipe SEO?

[scrollaway]

What did I claim?

[jefftk]

Your parent asked "can you link me to a highly ranked recipe page with a bullshit SEO story". I was showing how your first link wasn't an SEO story.

[sethammons]

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.

[tmountain]

https://www.garlicandzest.com/julia-childs-boeuf-bourguignon...

"When I woke up that Sunday morning, it was a crisp 68°. I opened every window in the house (the first time we’d aired it out since April) and put on a pair of jeans and a light long-sleeved shirt. While Scott was busy appraising his fantasy football rosters, I was searing beef and taking pictures."

[karatestomp]

> 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.

They're mostly copying recipes from other places then applying SEO. That's it. The ridiculous probably-made-up stories are for SEO.

[tmountain]

It's not about trashing someone for doing something they love. It's about a prescribed format for food blogs that has all but taken over anything food related on the internet. I highly doubt it's a coincidence that thousands of food bloggers adapted a "five pages about me and then the recipe" template for their writing. As others are saying, it's an SEO tactic, and it's probably annoying to the bloggers too.

There's no arguing about it making recipes more "readable" when you have to scan down page after page to get to the actual ingredient list. That's super annoying. To put it into perspective, if the recipe was at the top, and the blogger wanted to spend five chapters talking about their life afterwards, more power to them, I wouldn't care a bit.

[PenguinCoder]

Or maybe, people are just fed up with the 'fluff'. I know I am. I don't need or want a 10 minute lead in to a news story that finally explains the issue. I don't have time to sift through drivel to get the information I am after. This isn't academic research project. And frankly, I don't give two shits about ANY of the blog spam fluff. When I'm looking for a recipe, I want the technicals of 'how to make this', and that's it.

I see this as more a problem of the web, than the recipe sites themselves. More and more often, web sites are shoving information down your eyeballs to keep you on the page longer. I hate this trend. I want the service or information to give me what I want, and get out of my way. Google search? Get me what I want, and get out of the way. Email inbox? Same deal. Yet the exact opposite is happening with more and more invasive time wasting drivel, being injected everywhere.

[M2Ys4U]

That's not why every single recipe site has these stupid blurbs... it's that Google wants unique prose on the page in order to rank it highly on SERPs