Best Served Hot: August 2–8, 2026
Hello!
I’m coming across more people leaving or considering leaving Substack as subscription fatigue is becoming a thing, and are moving back to WordPress for the ad revenue and integrated website experience, and switching to using a membership paywall to go ad-free. Have you noticed this too?
So… I’m not sure you’re ready for it, but winter recipes are back on the charts with top food bloggers this week. Other new trending recipe types this week include no-bake, keto, peanut butter, and banana.
Only 29% of top food bloggers posted this week, with the most popular publishing day being Wednesday.
Instagram is still the most-promoted social media platform (97%), followed by Facebook (91%), Pinterest (87%), YouTube (63%), X (37%), TikTok (37%), and Substack (4%).
Last week, Substack added an AI-checker and said they didn’t want to become like LinkedIn’s slop. This week, LinkedIn added a “seems like AI slop” button. This is all happening as bots overtook humans in web traffic for the first time, and an ad-industry report found AI-generated content passed premium quality checks 70% of the time.
Google opens Social Search Console data to everyone, allowing you to track how your posts on Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube perform on Google Search, Discover, and Google News.
This week’s Food Blogger Pro episode warns food bloggers to check their archives for link spam, such as link swaps, arrangements with friends, roundups arranged via spreadsheets, or ghostwriter cross-links.
Raptive releases an interactive workbook for understanding Google Discover, along with a demo if you’re not with them.
If we haven’t yet met, I’m Rachel Cunliffe, food blog designer + statistician at cre8d design. Every Sunday, Best Served Hot provides exclusive trend analysis and clear-cut insights and industry news you need to know. Please share this Substack with your food blogging friends.
Methodology: Top food blogs are defined as those running Raptive ads with 100K+ followers, DA 40+, and have posted in the past six months. Lifestyle, cocktail-only, and aggregator sites are excluded. This week we’re tracking 518 sites.
