If you search for "Chicken Parmesan Recipe", what you get is the website optimized for appearing at the top of the search result list for "Chicken Parmesan Reci

If you search for "Chicken Parmesan Recipe", what you get is the website optimized for appearing at the top of the search result list for "Chicken Parmesan Recipe". You don't get the best website, you don't get the best recipe, you don't even get something with unique content. The only way copyright helps is it allows you to send nastygrams to Google in your fight to remain on top. Doesn't seem to me to be all that important compared to the SEO and ad-based monetization to afford to work on SEO. You'd probably get the same kind of sites and the exact same recipes in search results if copyright wasn't a thing. Only difference is that the fluff would be copied outright and the copy-and-SEO-optimize site might place above the "original" source.