Yes, they can do whatever they desire. The issue is when people are required to write life stories and superfluous content not because that's the direction they want to go, and not because it's appealing to their target audience, but because it's the only way they can rank well on Google.
On the user side if you only want straightforward recipes, you're out of luck, because they're never going to be near the top of the search results.
If you are one of the people looking to read these recipe background stories, even you get a mediocre experience, because the majority of the content you're reading was written primarily for Google (how many times can I reference salmon, fish, atlantic, norwegian, protein, healthy, omega-3 and smoked in this recipe story to hit all of the important keywords?).
>The issue is when people are required to write life stories and superfluous content not because that's the direction they want to go, and not because it's appealing to their target audience, but because it's the only way they can rank well on Google.
Citation needed. When I do a search on, say, Wiener Schnitzel (which I made last night) it looks to me as if the top searches are pretty to the point. Honestly, I tend to want some context for a recipe other than just a list of ingredients and some directions.
Same for me too - especially in the Google recipe snippets at the top of the search. I find those tend to have more straight recipes, whereas the normal search list has more of the story style.
And for context, I do like reading about the history of a recipe, why it was created etc... not all the stories float my boat, but literally all it takes is a scroll.
On the user side if you only want straightforward recipes, you're out of luck, because they're never going to be near the top of the search results.
If you are one of the people looking to read these recipe background stories, even you get a mediocre experience, because the majority of the content you're reading was written primarily for Google (how many times can I reference salmon, fish, atlantic, norwegian, protein, healthy, omega-3 and smoked in this recipe story to hit all of the important keywords?).