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Comment by yamtaddle | Hacker News Reader

Google wills it so. Why? IDK, ask them. Probably yet another case of something net-harmful making them more money.

Luckily it's also one of the only cases where a microformat is actually nigh-universally used. Outside a few sites where the "fluff" isn't fluff and is actually good content itself (e.g. Serious Eats) I just throw the URL into Paprika 3 (no affiliation, and there are tons of other programs and probably some browser plugins to do the same thing) and let it strip it down to the ingredients and instructions by reading the microformat markup. Works flawlessly nearly every time.

[EDIT] Credit where it's due, I'm also pretty sure the microformat is only popular because of Google. I think they downrank sites in recipe searches if Google can't "see" the recipe, using the microformat. They may be both the cause of, and solution to, the problem.

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Finding a result on Google, clicking on it, then leaving and clicking something else on Google means you probably didn't find the thing you were looking for. Staying on one site for a while probably means you found what you were using for. Presumably Google uses this information to try to determine if you engaged with the site, and then it ranks sites that you stay on longer higher in search results.

This works great for things like StackOverflow posts where you can quickly judge if the answer is correct, and if it's not, you can quickly bounce. It's not great for recipes, which are almost always "correct" (in that they are a recipe of the type you're looking for), so spending longer probably just means you scrolled for longer.

How does it interplay with opening multiple search results in new tabs at once? It's been ages since I've personally visited search results sequentially - I open them in batches.

Not a problem, you're an outlier, the average user either doesn't use tabs or doesn't open multiple of them to let them load in the background because they haven't experienced the web on a modem and "I click, page loads in 1-5s, I read" is what they're used to.

Not sure experiencing the web on a modem is a real factor here. Anecdotally, at least, I've certainly experienced the web on a modem -- and living in a rural area, broadband wasn't available for me until maybe 2005-2006 (and even then, only 1.5Mbps until around 2014) -- but I open multiple tabs not to let them load in the background, but to avoid unnecessary context switches. I can load ten tabs async, never context-switch, and then process the tabs one by one. Half the context switches of opening a page, going back, etc.

I feel for your prolonged and unnecessary pain with rural broadband, a friend of mine lived just a few hundred meters too far from the great access and suffered for years until the cable company finally relented.

Regarding context-switching: that's even more of an outlier! The vast majority never worries about that, and from my experience even among knowledge workers, that's rare.

I've clicked on videos on youtube and noped out of them in seconds, and youtube only pushes them harder.

Yeah I wish you could hard nope our of videos and never see them again. It should be possible without viewing the shit. I could ban all the conspiracy and fake shit

I've never seen a recipe that was "correct". I don't even know what that would mean. As far as i'm concerned, a recipe is a suggestion. If I don't know how to make a dish, I read several recipes, and then brew my own.

I don't think most online recipes are "correct", especially chili recipes that call for Heinz baked beanz. Wut?

You are clearly skilled at cooking. For people like myself, who are not so blessed, rigorously following recipes is the only realistic path to producing decent dishes.

So, for me, a recipe can indeed be correct or not. My definition of "correct" is narrow, though -- if it produces a dish I enjoy, it's correct. Otherwise, it's not.

Trying to mentally parse these long winded recipes = takes longer to read = "greater engagement". These crappy recipes are all about seo and add placement as you'll notice these recipes are loaded with Google ads. So it is a self fulfilling prophecy that the pages where users spend more time and see more ads are ranked highest.

I suspect theres also a halo effect.

Like how select cuts of beef slow roasted with veggies and served on a bed of glazed hand cut potatoes.

Is more appealing to a potential cook than cut beef in a slow cooker with some wedges.

I’ve completely given up on web recipes, and only use YouTube ones now. Most of the good recipes have a comment that has a condensed version of ingredients and instructions.

Paprika is great, though Umami's importer is even better: https://www.umami.recipes

Umami has Chrome/Firefox extensions that you can use while on desktop, which will sync your recipes to the app. Disclaimer: I built it :)

Any thought about possibly allowing the option to self host the app sometime in the future ? That would be wonderful at least to me

I'm open to it! Right now it runs on firebase and a unary gRPC service (nodejs). Probably firebase could be swapped out for supabase, and gRPC is easy enough to host.

Looks cool. As a cook in my fifth decade, may I humbly offer some suggestions? Im on Android and PC so perhaps not everything will apply, but here goes:

1. Import from other recipe apps.

Recipe apps and sites have a finite lifetime. Its great that you already support export, but import from others would be great. Pepperplate for example is sqlite on android. Other apps might be harder, eg the New York Times recipe box. But without import, its hard to commit to a new system.

2. Cooking mode

This is a mode that avoids that situation where you are following a recipe and need to manipulate your phone but you cant because you have hands covered in flour/chicken juice or whatever. Voice control would be awesome too: "scroll down", "set a timer for 20"

3. Notes Some place where you can comment on the recipe, like "use peanut oil not canola"

Thank you

Awesome, thanks for the feedback.

> 1. Import from other recipe apps.

Definitely agree. A couple days ago, someone asked for a Paprika recipe importer, which I've added here: https://www.umami.recipes/paprika-import I'll have to take a look at Pepperplate and NYT recipe box (though, you can already import any NYT recipe link!).

> Voice control

Love this idea.

> 3. Notes

There is indeed a notes section! Though I'm guessing you mean inline comments, like google docs style?

On #1, there are so many potential import sources that you probably cant do them all solo...but attacking the top few and documenting what your import format is would be a win. In short, let motivated members of the community with an itch to scratch help. Good ones could be folded into the mainline if you agree with the submitter, maybe.

On 3, notes can either be for personal use (eg in Cozi's recipe handler) or a shared conversation in a recipe (like what the NYT does). I feel the former is more important, but your users might have different opinions.

It may look better, but it's only available on iOS.

Every iOS feature is available on web: https://www.umami.recipes/sign-in

But yes, you are right, as far as native apps go. FWIW, I just got an Android test phone so I can start on that version, should be ready in a few months.

> The beautifully designed free app to collect, organize, and share recipes. For iPhone and iPad.

Yeah, doesn't look like it's available on M1 macs either, which I think think is just a checkbox in the app store.

I tried that and it was super buggy... Thankfully I built the whole thing in SwiftUI so that I can port it to Mac fairly quickly. Moving as fast as I can!

I just want to say that I really love your choice of colours and how they flow together. It's so satisfying

Wow thank you! Fun fact: that orange color is actually part of the display-p3 color space: https://webkit.org/blog/10042/wide-gamut-color-in-css-with-d...

^ Colors in that space only just recently started getting supported by displays/browsers. And while p3 colors work in css on Safari, I had to use a single-pixel background png to make it work in Chrome.

If you decide to port this for Android I would be super interested, it looks fantastic

Thanks! Hopefully will have something in the next few months.

Yes. I think Google deserves a ton of credit for microformats, and you can just use a browser extension like Repibox that shows you only the recipe when you go to a recipe site.

I think the reason Google wanted microformats is for Google Assistant recipe answers.

this smells entirely like the notorious 10-minute youtube monetization switch.

longer times on a page means longer enagement == more ads revenue.

is it possible that google is incentivizing longer engagements via adwords by using search priority that ranks by average time spent on page?

I have no direct knowledge, but Google is known to penalize duplicate pages. Without the lead in, one bread recipe is pretty much the same page as 1,000 others.

I assume thats how Google Nest Hub can parse recpies into actual steps with a button or voice command to step forward!

i just print them out so I can refer to the recipe when my fingers are wet/sticky while preparing the meal.

What is the microformat? Does it have a name or do you have a link?

I think it's mainly h-recipe:

http://microformats.org/wiki/h-recipe

But it looks like there might be one or two others active in the wild.

I wonder when microformats are going to die now that we have gpt

> Google wills it so. Why? IDK, ask them.

Google presents what its customers (people doing searches) want to see, so shouldn't we ask the people who click the results that make it to the top (whether they leave the page dissatisfied or not is a different story, right?) over and over?

What incentive does Google have for prioritizing succinct quality posts versus blogspam posts? What incentive does Google have for prioritizing blogspam posts over succinct quality posts? Why is it the way it is if we're talking about the unsponsored (not paid) organic results?

As a blogspam author, why do you want people on your page? To get more AdSense views/impressions? You typically aren't selling anything on a website that gives away free long-winded recipes (so conversion rate/cost per click/paid advertising isn't really a concern?)

> Google presents what its customers (people doing searches) want to see

Google presents what it thinks people want to see, which it infers based on some number it can collect, like time-on-page, or scroll depth. The argument is that its proxy metrics for "the user liked this" are ill-considered, especially in this particular context.

Even when Google acts like a rational actor, it is not an oracle. It rationally optimizes an observable metric, which may or may not correlate to its actual goal.

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