The problem is that Google forces actual good cooks to make their recipes look like worthless blogspam, but a good original recipe is not actually worthless blogspam, even when disguised in the way Google requires.
When it looks and acts like the spam sites, then what difference is there really? If I have to scroll 4 pages to find the ingredients and then scroll around like crazy to find the instructions (then scroll back and forth while cooking/baking) then it does not matter how good the recipe is, the page killed it for me.
I'd argue that most web users have a higher tolerance for ads than HN users, so they put up with the scrolling. And if it results in a tasty recipe, then they'll do it next time too, since that's seemingly the (tolerable) price to be paid for good food.
But lots of recipe sites now have a "jump to recipe" link at the top, so they've realised the junk is annoying for some fraction of their users. Although page junk is a pain, shortcuts for low-tolerance users seems like a good compromise.
Look it's not OK to milk humans like this. It's manipulative and rapey. Just because the NPC meme is true does not mean you get to hack their programming for a buck and call yourself a good community member and businessman.
Because websites aren't free to build or run. No one is obligated to put ads on their site, sure. They're also not obligated to work for many hours to provide you with free content or pay $X/no to serve it to you.
But they can also have a separate job that doesn't ruin the internet and produce out of generosity, like some of us, free content that is not span ridden.
Also web hosting doesn't cost much when your website is well made with some frugality in mind.
And there are also better, cleaner ways to make money on the internet: getting rid of the ads and spam and having the content accessible to paid members.
While it is admirable that you are willing to produce content out of your own generosity, it seems a little optimistic to assume that everyone making content on the internet is both willing and able to share it for free.
I am somewhat curious to hear more about the better and cleaner ways to make money on the internet, but I have a suspicion that in some circumstances (such as recipes) they may put you at a competitive disadvantage. I certainly have no desire to pay to access recipes I find via Google searches.
We need to find a metric for anti-profitability. I think that index could yield much higher quality results.
Detect sales/commercial language and structure,* and specifically target that for removal from results as if sales-oriented sites were hardcore porn and the child safety filter is turned on.
*Buy and cart buttons/functions, tables containing prices with descriptions but don't look like long-form reviews (which would be it's own filterable tag), etc, and domains trying to obfuscate are blacklisted permanently.
Really just removing all sites with ads would be a huge improvement. Regular old websites trying to sell you something are usually not nearly as bad as those that want to monetize you while pretending to be free.
The thing is, even if you don't put ads on a page or tool, Google will sometimes not index it because it doesn't think there's 'enough' content, no matter how little sense that makes. At least half the issues with recipe sites and company sites come from them trying to get a site that doesn't need reems of text content indexed by a search engine that seems to blindly value the quantity of content and time spent on the page over all else.
The people who have bad content are the ones to get money, while those who have good content are not. Logical result is that people with good content stop producing that content while the people with bad content continue producing it and being rewarded for it.
Look I hate these SEO-laden pages just as much as the next guy, but I think the binary classification of "good content" and "bad content" lacks nuance. I would refer to it instead as "bad packaging" of (often) good content. As much as I loathe having to hunt for the "jump to recipe" button on my phone each time I open one of these pages, I also appreciate being able to freely view recipes which I enjoy and cook regularly.
I just stopped looking for receipts online if I can avoid it. It became literally faster and easier to search in old school cook book. And there was period when I considered those completely outdated.
The problem is that Google forces actual good cooks to make their recipes look like worthless blogspam, but a good original recipe is not actually worthless blogspam, even when disguised in the way Google requires.