google’s latest update to the quality raters guidelines on january 23rd includes a section specifically for recipe sites. they warn that making users scroll a lot or hiding the ‘jump to recipe’ button is bad for user experience.
> the main goal of the page is to share a butterbeer recipe. while the ingredients and some background info are at the top, you have to scroll a lot to actually find the recipe. the ‘jump to recipe’ link is also hard to find.
> the page has a bunch of unrelated content between the butterbeer ingredients and the actual recipe, including photos and reviews of other food items. plus, ads and popups make it even harder to get to the recipe.
> all of this makes for a poor user experience.
> a higher rating could be given if the page was better organized, the recipe was easier to find, and there were fewer distractions like ads and filler content.
as someone who bakes a lot, this has always been annoying.
i usually avoid american recipe sites for this reason (no offense), because they always have a long personal story before getting to the actual recipe.
even major publications do this—some long essay about ‘summer memories in minnesota’ before they tell you how to make a pie.
bbc good food is my go-to because they don’t waste time.
this has been best practice for food blogs for years, and the better ones already follow it.
but a lot of the top-ranking sites are old blogs with high authority. they’re either scared to change anything and risk losing rankings, or they just keep doing what worked for them in the past.
over the last year, there’s been a lot of movement in rankings, so more changes are probably coming.