> What is the reason that every single recipe site, without fail, follows this same horrible pattern? I.e. the twenty paragraph "When I was a child growing up in Atlanta..." followed by a crappy in-house video player followed by, finally, the actual recipe?
I lived with a food blogger for six years and might be able to provide some more perspective for these types of comments (beyond just SEO).
First, there's actually an audience that _is_ interested in this type of content. Some are repeat readers who want to follow food bloggers' lives, similar to how HN readers might follow a streamer on Twitch. It's a much more rewarding journey if people don't just see you as a recipe database and bounce, but actually engage with you and follow you over time.
Second, a lot of food bloggers simply enjoy writing and see their blogs as a way to express themselves. Some of them write these stories for their family and friends and didn't think they'd be at the top of Google.
Third, it takes a ton of effort to write a single recipe. I can't speak for others, but hers involved multiple days of planning/cooking/shooting, remaking it several times so she knew it'd be consistent for the reader, planning/shooting/editing the photos, and even scrapping recipes altogether if they didn't work out. She also had to deal with the business end of things (like getting a lawyer, accountant, social media manager, and managing contracts with sponsors). Her attitude was basically, "if I'm doing all of these things to provide someone with a free recipe, they can scroll past my story if they don't feel like reading it". (That being said, her site was pretty minimalist compared to other food blogs – she didn't run ads.)
FWIW, I don't have a problem with onlyrecipe.app, I just wanted to share this because I'd be interested if I didn't know already.
I use a Simple Analytics competitor – not going to name them here out of respect for OP, who is doing great work with his product – but yes, this space seems to be growing. Personally speaking, there are a few reasons I've switched from Google Analytics:
1. The simpler UI is much easier to explain to clients. No training needed.
2. The simpler UI also helps me keep track of my _own_ metrics faster – I can do a 1 minute check at the end of the week instead of clicking through layers of dashboards and setting up custom reports.
3. Now I don't need to show an annoying cookie popup across all of my sites; I also like that it respects my users' privacy.
4. My sites load a bit faster (GA had a larger filesize). This is supposed to help with conversion.
5. Having support, if I need it, is nice. Going with a smaller company is almost an _easier_ sell to my clients because they know they have the option to get help when they need it.
Also, it doesn't matter to everyone, but I like to support indie businesses when I can. Analytics are important, but they're not mission-critical (like payment processing or something), so I'm fine with working with a smaller company in this area.
I lived with a food blogger for six years and might be able to provide some more perspective for these types of comments (beyond just SEO).
First, there's actually an audience that _is_ interested in this type of content. Some are repeat readers who want to follow food bloggers' lives, similar to how HN readers might follow a streamer on Twitch. It's a much more rewarding journey if people don't just see you as a recipe database and bounce, but actually engage with you and follow you over time.
Second, a lot of food bloggers simply enjoy writing and see their blogs as a way to express themselves. Some of them write these stories for their family and friends and didn't think they'd be at the top of Google.
Third, it takes a ton of effort to write a single recipe. I can't speak for others, but hers involved multiple days of planning/cooking/shooting, remaking it several times so she knew it'd be consistent for the reader, planning/shooting/editing the photos, and even scrapping recipes altogether if they didn't work out. She also had to deal with the business end of things (like getting a lawyer, accountant, social media manager, and managing contracts with sponsors). Her attitude was basically, "if I'm doing all of these things to provide someone with a free recipe, they can scroll past my story if they don't feel like reading it". (That being said, her site was pretty minimalist compared to other food blogs – she didn't run ads.)
FWIW, I don't have a problem with onlyrecipe.app, I just wanted to share this because I'd be interested if I didn't know already.