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The lasagne recipe page would be one I count as bad. There's a lot of useless text before the recipe. The other two result pages are good. Interesting enough,

The lasagne recipe page would be one I count as bad. There's a lot of useless text before the recipe. The other two result pages are good. Interesting enough, the big name recipe sites: Allrecipes, food network, NYTimes, binging with babish etc. all are short and to the point. But for some reason the crappy recipe sites outperform them on Google.

schnevets 5y ago
The Lasagna recipe is an independent cooking blogger (note the "Hi there, I'm Holly!" in the top-right corner). Food Network, Allrecipes, Tegel, and other sites mentioned are not promoting a specific person, but an entire brand. Babish is the exception to this rule, but he "changed the game" by going for YouTube instead of blogs. Although the optimization is infuriating, in my search to become a decent cook, I have found more success following specific writers instead of a top result/highest rated meal. Many of these writers self-promote (and cross-promote) on sites with the same template as spendwithpennies.com I wouldn't be surprised if that annoying SEO template was designed in collaboration with Cookbook publishers. The "anecdote before recipe" style was made famous in Irma S. Rombauer's Joy of Cooking, and took on a variety of forms throughout the 20th century.
- WaxProlix 5y ago
  > Babish is the exception to this rule, but he "changed the game" by going for YouTube instead of blogs. I think this (or a hybrid approach) was already a thing. See Food Wishes (Chef John), which has been using a similar model for a while.
srcreigh 5y ago
The "Jump To Recipe" button on the Lasagna page took to straight to the ingredients
creato 5y ago
NYT recipes are almost always in the top 3 results for me, I don’t think they are being outperformed that much if at all.
tiborsaas 5y ago
I don't know how to make it, a list of ingredients wouldn't help me much. That article is a bit too superficial for me. Actually, video recipes are the best imho: https://www.youtube.com/c/yousuckatcooking https://www.youtube.com/c/yousuckatcooking :)

schnevets 5y ago

The Lasagna recipe is an independent cooking blogger (note the "Hi there, I'm Holly!" in the top-right corner). Food Network, Allrecipes, Tegel, and other sites mentioned are not promoting a specific person, but an entire brand. Babish is the exception to this rule, but he "changed the game" by going for YouTube instead of blogs. Although the optimization is infuriating, in my search to become a decent cook, I have found more success following specific writers instead of a top result/highest rated meal. Many of these writers self-promote (and cross-promote) on sites with the same template as spendwithpennies.com I wouldn't be surprised if that annoying SEO template was designed in collaboration with Cookbook publishers. The "anecdote before recipe" style was made famous in Irma S. Rombauer's Joy of Cooking, and took on a variety of forms throughout the 20th century.

WaxProlix 5y ago
> Babish is the exception to this rule, but he "changed the game" by going for YouTube instead of blogs. I think this (or a hybrid approach) was already a thing. See Food Wishes (Chef John), which has been using a similar model for a while.

srcreigh 5y ago

The "Jump To Recipe" button on the Lasagna page took to straight to the ingredients

creato 5y ago

NYT recipes are almost always in the top 3 results for me, I don’t think they are being outperformed that much if at all.

tiborsaas 5y ago

I don't know how to make it, a list of ingredients wouldn't help me much. That article is a bit too superficial for me. Actually, video recipes are the best imho: https://www.youtube.com/c/yousuckatcooking https://www.youtube.com/c/yousuckatcooking :)