The future sucks
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Because that's what computers used to be for. Now we drive engagement.
But OP stated that, the text only being there to manipulate SEO, the authors don't really care of you read it. So out it at thd bottom, after the recipe!
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Recipe articles are probably the best examples of web content whose only real purpose is ad clicks. All of the text is flavor text, in every sense.
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So why not put the recipe first, and the bullshit after?
Search engines favor text earlier in the site. Text "above the fold" (the area where you wouldn't have to scroll to see it) is scored higher.
https://www.pedalo.co.uk/seo-experiment-text-position-keyword-rankings/
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Those are put there for SEO purposes. Google favors sites with these big stories. The copyright issue alone doesn't justify what's there; you could do a quick blurb of a few sentences and it would be enough. Plenty of cookbooks do that.
This is why a lot of those sites have a button that says "skip to recipe". It's a bunch of text that's meant to be for robots, not you, and they really don't care if you read it.
Now that it's being created by LLMs, we may have the first known example of human language written by robots and intended for robots. Welcome to a cyberpunk dystopia.
SEO is part of it, but it's also literally just more physical real estate for ads. Recipe sites, including personal recipe blogs, are infamous for the sheer volume of ads placed on them. Yes, everyone just scrolls to the recipe so it kind of doesn't matter, but longer text means more space for ads.
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eh bad take imo, this is one of the few places where AI shines, it's great because you no longer need to go to a recipe website to begin with, you just ask it for a recipe and it gives you one and then you can discuss different variants etc
Not if you want any kind of consistency so you can actually replicate or understand what you're doing. Like hallucinations aside (and we really shouldn't put them aside because they're a very real thing in this context), the point of a recipe is that you aren't just getting an averaged version of the process; you're getting a curated version with specific considerations in mind.
So you can ask AI for a cinnamon apple pie recipe, and you might get an okay one, but you're probably never going to get a better-than-average one. And if you do like the version of the recipe it gave you, you had better write it down because when you ask for it next time, it's not going to be the same cinnamon apple pie recipe. I've personally played around with recipes in AI, and even within the same chat, there's no consistency because it never "knows" anything; it only makes predictive guesses. So when I say, "I like that recipe, but let's try half as much ginger and maybe add some mirin," it will reduce the ginger and add mirin, but suddenly all the volumes of the other ingredients have changed, and some items may even disappear.
So yeah, I think this is something that AI could potentially work well for in the future, as is kind of always the case with any potentially useful AI application right now. But right now, until they've been developed with some kind of better active memory and/or something resembling comprehension rather than predictive association, I think this is a field where AI is passable at best, not yet somewhere it shines.
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Search engines favor text earlier in the site. Text "above the fold" (the area where you wouldn't have to scroll to see it) is scored higher.
https://www.pedalo.co.uk/seo-experiment-text-position-keyword-rankings/
Ahh, that explains it then. Cheers!
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If the "jump to recipe" button doesnt work or doesnt exist, Im out.
Sadly, by the time you see that the button isn't there, you've already given them the visit and ad impressions... Well, unless you run an ad blocker but what horrible person would do that?
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eh bad take imo, this is one of the few places where AI shines, it's great because you no longer need to go to a recipe website to begin with, you just ask it for a recipe and it gives you one and then you can discuss different variants etc
It's awesome that it gives you cooking tips you'll find no where else, like adding glue to improve the consistency of cheese. Or making sure you get your recommended daily serving amount of rocks.
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Sadly, by the time you see that the button isn't there, you've already given them the visit and ad impressions... Well, unless you run an ad blocker but what horrible person would do that?
Adblocker FTW. Also im pretty sure ads dont pay shit without clickthrough. God the current financialisation of the web sucks ass.
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You of in the food and of out the cold hot food
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you should ask ai why you don't have a gf
Ok, you made me look.
Perplexity got the longest, most boring and uplifting article about how it's normal and there's nothing to worry about. It never mentioned that my wife would dislike the idea, so the personalization was off for the day.
Also, it gave no references. What is weird. Like if the text was hardcoded there.
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I would never trust it’s answer to “how much bell pepper should I put in the recipe?” (Which I believe is what recipes are about)
I mean to be fair, you're free to click on the links if you want to verify these things no?
Oh, I didn't know they do links now
In this case I'll give you that it can be useful (mostly in reading several recipes and summarizing), but personally I'm still going to do the old school web search (if anything, just to exercise my information retrieval skill, which I believe is important)
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You of in the food and of out the cold hot food
Come again?
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over robust, verifiable information
Random websites are robust, verifiable information now are they? How times change
30 years ago I was told they are unreliable and to use books in the library for research
20 years ago I was told using WebMD was unreliable, after all it will just say you have cancer laugh out loud! Using the internet for medical information? Crazy!
I wonder where we'll be in 20 or 30 years time
Hopefully somewhere less impatient and stupid. Won't know where your arrogant ass is though, since you're about to be blocked
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Is there a site that does it right? I just need an ingredient list, times, temperatures and maybe a handful of specific pointers if I really need them.
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Holy fuck I needed this in my life
A website that begs you to download their app instead of just having recipes?
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Is there a site that does it right? I just need an ingredient list, times, temperatures and maybe a handful of specific pointers if I really need them.
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A website that begs you to download their app instead of just having recipes?
True, it does advertise its app. But you can still put in a recipe link and it cleans it up without the app or logging in. Which is way better than the original recipe website.
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Is there a site that does it right? I just need an ingredient list, times, temperatures and maybe a handful of specific pointers if I really need them.
Someone should make a browser extension or something that automatically recognizes what part of the page is the recipe, extracts it, and only shows you that.
