We Analyzed 23 Popular Recipes: You Scroll Past ~1,300 Words to Reach the Recipe
Everyone jokes that online recipes bury the ingredients under a novel. We wanted a real number, so we measured it. We pulled 23 popular recipes from well-known food blogs and counted exactly how far you scroll before you reach the actual recipe.
The short version: on a typical recipe page, you read past about 1,300 words before you get to the ingredients. That is roughly five to six minutes of reading, for a list of ingredients you could scan in fifteen seconds.
The headline numbers
Across the recipes we could analyze:
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Median words before the recipe | ~1,321 words |
| Longest intro measured | ~2,997 words (nearly 3,000) |
| Shortest intro measured | ~424 words |
| Median total words on the page | ~2,856 |
| Pages with a "Jump to Recipe" button | 77% |
| Median page weight (HTML) | ~526 KB |
| Median ad and tracker references per page | ~180 |
The most telling stat: 77% add a "Jump to Recipe" button
More than three out of four of these pages include a "Jump to Recipe" button near the top. Think about what that means: the sites themselves know most readers do not want the story. They added a button whose entire job is to skip the thing they wrote. The intro exists for search engines and ad space, not for you.
Why recipe pages are this long
It is not really about cooking. Longer pages have historically ranked better in search, and more words mean more room for ads. A basic list of ingredients also is not protected by copyright, so the surrounding story is partly there to make the page original. We wrote more about that in why are recipe blogs so long.
How we measured this
To keep it honest, here is exactly what we did:
- We collected 23 popular recipes from major food blogs (banana bread, chocolate chip cookies, chicken parmesan, and pancakes) in July 2026.
- For each page we fetched the HTML and stripped out scripts and markup to get the visible text.
- We located the recipe using the page's own structured data (the first listed ingredient) and counted the words that appear before it. That is the "words before the recipe" figure.
- We checked each page for a "Jump to Recipe" button and counted references to common ad and analytics domains as a rough proxy for ad and tracker load.
- 22 of 23 pages loaded successfully; 17 had structured data we could use for the word count. So the word-count figures are based on 17 pages, and the rest on 22.
These are approximations, not a peer-reviewed study, but the pattern is clear and consistent: the recipe is usually a long way down.
The fix: skip straight to the recipe
You do not have to read any of it. Gratly is a free Chrome extension that turns any recipe page into just the recipe, in one click. No 1,300-word intro, no ads, no scrolling. It also gives you a cook mode that keeps your screen on, timers pulled from the steps, and serving scaling. It works on the same sites we measured, and thousands more.
FAQ
How long is the average recipe blog intro? In our sample of popular recipes, the median was about 1,300 words before the ingredients, and the longest was nearly 3,000. That is roughly five to six minutes of reading before the recipe.
Why do recipe blogs put the story first? Mostly for search rankings and ad revenue. A longer page has historically ranked better and has more room for ads. Many sites add a "Jump to Recipe" button because they know readers want to skip ahead.
How do I get straight to the recipe? Use the "Jump to Recipe" button if there is one, or a tool like Gratly that strips the page down to just the ingredients and steps in one click.
Get just the recipe
Add Gratly to Chrome for free and never scroll past a 1,300-word intro again. Related: how to remove ads from recipe websites.