What's the deal with these online recipe sites?

[Rough_Draft]

@Chronos

I expect that there’s some standard website-building template or automated tool out there where you can select “recipe” as your type of page from the drop-down list, and then it asks you for up to 8 pictures of the dish and prompts you for the family history of the dish and so on. Most of the people posting these recipes probably are genuine moms posting Gramma’s genuine recipe, but while they know how to bake casseroles, they don’t know how to make a webpage, so they just use the first standard easy-to-use tool they find.

Yes, this sounds like a very likely scenario. It also explains why all these websites are so similar but not identical.

Arkcon, your example was pretty much exactly what I’m talking about, although with a few more ads to scroll past than typical, maybe.

And as for those asking about my search methods, it’s nothing but pure self-indulgence. I imagine something I’d like to eat, whether it’s a hot dog casserole or the latest variation on Creme Brulee, and I do an image search to look for a finished dish that matches my fantasy. Sometimes it leads to a viable recipe, sometimes not.

I’m gonna have to look into this Chrome extension. Thanks!

[pulykamell]

@Chronos

Eh, recipes tend to get passed on by word of mouth, and tend not to leave much, if any, attribution trail. Say you find a casserole recipe on one of those sites, and bring it to a potluck. Everyone loves it, and so next time, you make it again. Someone else at the potluck asks for your recipe, and it ends up going in their recipe book as either “Sausage-Noodle Casserole”, or “pulykamell’s casserole”. Then their kid grows up, and remembers it as “Mom’s casserole”, and so on.

Sure, but online, I do find a good number of bloggers do try to attribute when they wholesale copy or adapt a recipe from an online source, and I have seen controversies erupt when exact recipes have been copied and not attributed. Where the line is drawn can be fuzzy. With traditional dishes, it’s impossible to source, of course, but if I share and copy a recipe directly from a book or a blog and post it, I attribute the source I found it from (even if that source didn’t develop it themselves.) I know it’s not really necessary, but I don’t like presenting something as if it’s my own if all I did was copy somebody else’s recipe.

[CarnalK]

I am sure it is some template website but these aren’t confused amateur chefs who feel obligated to write 5 page descriptions of family/ingredient lore because they were prompted by the app.

[garygnu]

To the authors, these sites are not online recipe books, they’re blogs about cooking. When viewed as such, the exposition is understandable, but because so many of these people are boring twits there text is boring rambling. And probably scroll bait.

FYI, most sites have a “print this recipe” button that shows just the recipe. Bookmark that if you plan to use it again.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@CarnalK

Unless you are a Google optimization expert, I’m going to be a little skeptical that rambling family stories gets you ranked higher in search results.

A few weeks ago I looked up a recipe for Dal. The top-ranked recipe followed this format. At the bottom, there were comments, and someone wrote something snarky, like, “Great recipe, but for the love of Christ could you at least put a link to the recipe at the top of your freakin’ novel about it?”

The author responded, in essence, “Sorry not sorry, I have to do this for search engine optimization.”

I have no idea whether this is accurate, but at least some site owners believe it is.

Wait, Here’s the recipe. Two things:

1. The comment is this:

Is this a food blog or million words thesis?
Total waste of time. Why there is no option to jump to recipe?

I’m not sure why you feel the need to attack me, but I write posts so that they are helpful to those less familiar with the cooking methods in the recipe and to provide a background on my recipes. It also helps the recipe rank well on search engines, which is how so many people are able to find the post and try out the recipe! As for a jump to recipe button, I’m not going to add one. You can choose to scroll or find your recipes elsewhere if you prefer!

2. The page now has a jump to recipe button :D.

[CarnalK]

The top used/ranked recipe sites don’t do this though. I wouldn’t be surprised if the runner of that site was just going off what some buddy like Terminus Est told him.

Eta: but I don’t have a hate for sites who do. There’s definitely a market for people who want to know the history of yogurt before they make tzatziki.

[Ukulele_Ike]

@Chronos

Eh, recipes tend to get passed on by word of mouth, and tend not to leave much, if any, attribution trail. Say you find a casserole recipe on one of those sites, and bring it to a potluck. Everyone loves it, and so next time, you make it again. Someone else at the potluck asks for your recipe, and it ends up going in their recipe book as either “Sausage-Noodle Casserole”, or “pulykamell’s casserole”. Then their kid grows up, and remembers it as “Mom’s casserole”, and so on.

I would eat the ever-lovin’ SHIT out of pulykamell’s casserole. And serve it to guests. “Would you like some more pulykamell’s casserole?” “WHAT the fuck is this called? Yes, please.”

Puly might call it hotdish, though.

[pulykamell]

@Ukulele_Ike

I would eat the ever-lovin’ SHIT out of pulykamell’s casserole. And serve it to guests. “Would you like some more pulykamell’s casserole?” “WHAT the fuck is this called? Yes, please.”

Puly might call it hotdish, though.

No, no. Casserole here. My mother-in-law, being a good Chippewa Falls native, would call it hot dish, though, if I call it that, it is somewhat cheekily.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@CarnalK

The top used/ranked recipe sites don’t do this though.

That recipe was the first hit I got when I searched for dal. I am curious what you see as first hits when you search for recipes. I usually see recipes with this blog format.

[aruvqan]

@Just_Asking_Questions

I see no ads, but I do see exactly what the OP sees. An huge history of the dish, from the time it came over on the Mayflower through the revolution, how it fed the troops in the battle of Gettysburg up through the author’s grandmother and mother and now her kids love it.

I don’t know why everyone has to have this. Do they think it gives “authenticity”? I ust skip to the recipe anyway, so it’s just wasted entropy.

Argh, I know … I absolutely hate it. I have been sort of planning on doing a food blog of my own at some point in the future in retirement, but I plan on putting the freaking recipe first, after one nice picture and a short one paragraph description of the food itself - like a rough thing like ‘Rischert is a traditional stew made of beans, barley, onions, cabbage, herbs and sometimes meat, dating back to roughly 1000 BCE in the Alps’ I can put more text and pictures and commentary after the recipe.

@Arkcon

I understand you might want to not feed these people clicks, but can you link to an example? I’d like to see one.

First off, I don’t understand how you search, I don’t use Google images ofr anything but meme pictures, and I hate Pinterest with a passion – it never leads me anywhere except to someone Pinterest page with not explanation of their images at all. (I actually blocked it on my browser, it may have improved, I just don’t know.) When I want a recipe, what I do is google web search by name. And click on reputable pages, at first. Although I do like good insigts from people’s blogs.

But yeah, scrollbait is now a thing. People so despise and hate clickbait that people have actually returned to the early web, where a page is built of images, practically useless ones, and the recipe is at the end. Did I just fall into a crack in time and land in 1992 again? Am I on AoL again?

There’s always the possibility that the similarities across disparate pages is a coincidence made from everyone using the same template. Makes me want to see these pages even more.

I generally use foodgawker . com as my first source for most anything foodwise unless I am after something specific that isn’t available on foodgawker.

[chela]

Random clicks lead to heavy ads.

try these sites first
epicurious
allrecipes
connoissereurusveg

[CarnalK]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

That recipe was the first hit I got when I searched for dal type . I am curious what you see as first hits when you search for recipes. I usually see recipes with this blog format.

Top hit is often allrecipes.com. If you look at ranking sites, allrecipes and foodnetwork are miles above. I do get these bloggy type hits as well.

[CarnalK]

Eta: I can see these five page stories adding more keywords for google to latch onto and moving your rank up. I just have a hard time believing Google simply ranks recipe sites higher because they are wordier.

[Reeses_Monkey]

Athena, pulykamell you’re welcome. Glad I could help.

[Stoid]

@Shalmanese

Its a SEO tactic. Google considers a) how much time you spent on a page and b) whether it was the final page you visited for a search query as signals on how to rank that page. The blogs with long heartfelt stories at the top end up doing well in Google so eventually everyone copied that style.

This

[Stoid]

I always begin at seriouseats.com, because they are, well, serious. Der.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@CarnalK

Eta: I can see these five page stories adding more keywords for google to latch onto and moving your rank up. I just have a hard time believing Google simply ranks recipe sites higher because they are wordier.

Top searches are for allrecipes.com and foodnetwork and the like, because they’re enormous. How does a tiny little blog get into the top searches for a recipe like dal? I figure there are only two possibilities: either have an ultra-kickass recipe, or manipulate the search results.

And the dal was fine, but it wasn’t ultra-kickass.

[Terminus_Est]

@CarnalK

Eta: I can see these five page stories adding more keywords for google to latch onto and moving your rank up. I just have a hard time believing Google simply ranks recipe sites higher because they are wordier.

Doesn’t matter what Google actually does. What matters is what the maintainers of the recipe site think Google does. If they think that writing a dissertation in conjuction with their recipe ranks them higher in Google’s eyes, that’s what they’ll do.

[HeyHomie]

RECIPE WEBSITE: Hey, Homie, I have a recipe for vegetarian pumpkin chili, want to take a look?
ME: That sounds great!
RECIPE WEBSITE: It was a cool autumn day in Poughkeepsie…
ME: Just the recipe will do, please. I don’t need exposition or context.
RECIPE WEBSITE: My partner and I had just spent a glorious morning at a pumpkin patch…
ME: Seriously, just the recipe.
RECIPE WEBSITE: …and then we hit up Upstate New York’s biggest spice market…

[kaylasdad99]

I usually try the Dope first, then head to Google.

Speaking of which, can somebody link to the recipe for pulykamell’s casserole? Sounds yummy.