Dear Google: This Post Is Not Useful. It’s a Novella About Cornbread

You know the moment. You Google something simple—like “best skillet cornbread recipe”—because you’re just trying to live your life. You want answers. You want clarity. You want cornbread.

But what do you get?

A 3,000-word emotional journey about how someone’s great-great-grandmother used to churn butter in a cabin on a hill while humming gospel tunes and contemplating the meaning of life.

What you do not get?
A freaking recipe.

Google, I’m begging you: can we stop pretending these blog posts are “useful content”? Because unless I specifically asked for “A Southern Woman’s Complicated Relationship with Yellow Cornmeal and Grief,” this is just filler dressed up as storytelling.

I’m Not Here for a Chapter Book, Susan

I’m here for the ingredients. The measurements. The temperature of the oven. I don’t need to know how cornbread was the emotional glue holding your family together through three divorces and a kitchen remodel.

I appreciate that food is memory. I really do. But when I’m mid-grocery run, phone in hand, trying to remember if I need baking soda or baking powder, the last thing I need is a tragic love story set in the Appalachian Mountains.

Just give me the damn recipe, Susan.

Let’s Talk About SEO Theater

Here’s the thing: I get it. I know why this happens. Google’s little algorithmic brain thinks long posts = valuable posts. It wants “high-quality,” “engaging,” “informative” content.

But what we’re getting instead is performative fluff.

Bloggers (and now, AI tools) are stretching one useful sentence into an entire act of theatre, complete with introspection, humor, and dramatic pauses like they’re auditioning for MasterClass.

Why? Because Google told them to.

Because “value” is no longer about usefulness. It’s about keywords, bounce rate, scroll time, and whether you mention the phrase “golden crust” in the H2 heading.

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

We used to be able to find things online. Remember that? You’d type “how to poach an egg” and immediately get instructions. No life story. No slow-loading pop-up. Just egg. Water. Done.

Now? We’re wading through: A preamble about breakfast being sacred.

A disclaimer that “everyone’s stove is different.”

A poetic paragraph about watching the sunrise with a soft egg and softer heart.

By the time you find the method, your water’s boiled down to nothing, your phone battery’s at 3%, and you’re questioning every decision that led you here.

The “Jump to Recipe” Button Is My Best Friend

Let’s just pause and thank the real MVP of the modern internet: the “Jump to Recipe” button.

If you run a blog and include this? I love you. I will click your affiliate link out of sheer respect.

Because what you’re saying is: “I know the game I’m playing, but I’m not gonna punish you for it.”

It’s like a hostage situation where the captor hands you the key and says, “Listen, I had to do this for ad revenue. But you’re free to go.”

That’s grace. That’s compassion. That’s humanity.

Google, You’ve Rewarded the Wrong Things

Here’s the kicker: these long, meandering, overly padded posts are ranking because Google thinks they’re helpful.

You know what’s not ranking?

The actually useful stuff. The person who wrote a clean, to-the-point post with real value and zero fluff. The blogger who said, “You want cornbread? Here’s your cornbread.”

Google looks at that and says, “Too short. Not engaging enough. Doesn’t reference the emotional weight of iron skillets.”

So instead, we get these SEO-optimized ‘Frankenposts’ that say the same thing 14 different ways while saying absolutely nothing at all.

This Isn’t Just About Cornbread

Cornbread is the symptom. This is happening across the board.

Looking for:

A fix for a tech issue?

A clear answer to a health question?

A quick tutorial?

Too bad. You’re getting a 20-paragraph odyssey with stock photos, bolded keywords, and at least one sentence that starts with, “As someone who’s always been passionate about [insert topic here]…”

It’s not information. It’s content cosplay.

And Google? You’re the enabler.

Can We Talk About the Ads?

Oh right. The ads.

Because if the 1,500 words of backstory weren’t enough, you’re also navigating a minefield of autoplay videos, pop-up recipe cards, and banner ads for skincare products you’ve never heard of.

You try to scroll? It jumps.
You try to read? The screen shifts.
You try to click “print”? Suddenly you’re subscribed to six newsletters and have downloaded a PDF about Paleo banana bread you didn’t ask for.

You know what would actually be useful content?

A page that loads. Without assaulting your senses like it’s a clickbait war zone.

Real Usefulness Isn’t Always Long-Winded

Here’s a hot take: sometimes, short content is more helpful.

Sometimes, usefulness looks like:

“Here’s the recipe.”

“Here’s the answer.”

“Here’s how to fix the thing.”

No metaphors. No backstory. Just the info you were actually searching for.

But right now, that kind of content is getting buried. Because Google wants “depth”—and has confused length with value.

There’s a difference.

To the Bloggers: I Feel You. I Really Do.

If you’re a food blogger, a tech writer, a how-to content creator—I see you. You’re doing what you have to do to be seen. You’re not the villain here. You’re surviving in a broken system.

But please know: we are all tired. So very tired.

If you must include a 900-word origin story about your childhood cornmeal trauma, at least give us a table of contents. Or a safe word. Or one of those “Jump to sanity” buttons.

Throw us a bone. Or a biscuit.

Dear Google: Do Better

You’ve got more power than any platform in the world. You can detect faces in photos, answer complex math questions, and make my phone ring without me touching it.

And yet you still think “most useful post” = “longest, keyword-stuffed novella with six Pinterest pins and a paragraph about Grandpa’s wood stove.”

Fix it.

Reward clarity.
Reward real answers.
Reward the person who just wanted to help someone make cornbread and didn’t make it a personal memoir.

Because the rest of us? We’re drowning in fluff. And our biscuits are burning.

Final Thought:

Cornbread is sacred. But if I have to scroll past twelve paragraphs about ancestral flour and emotional healing to find the bake time, I’m making toast instead.