Best Served Hot: June 28–July 4, 2026
Hello!
It’s that time of year: 4th of July has appeared on the category charts for the first time, in 14th place, along with American in 18th. Holidays dropped to 20th. Grilled jumps to second place for descriptors, behind easy. Summer ingredients also dominate, with corn, strawberry, blueberry, peach, and zucchini all making the top 20.
Carleig Bodrug’s Plant You and mother-daughter duo Beth Sinclair & Lexi Harrison’s Crowded Kitchen are growing rapidly on socials, each with new cookbooks.
Raptive analyzed 103K post updates: large updates (10%+ change in word count), drove about 9% more Google pageview growth than smaller ones.
Raptive analyzed the Google May 2026 update: 70% of their sites improved or remained stable. Lower ad density was one of the clearest site-level signals in the analysis. Their report offers many useful recommendations.
Google June 2026 spam update rolls out - this shouldn’t affect your site.
Instagram to add longer-form videos, including reel “series” and live TV.
Facebook is changing its Creator Studio tool; it will become an AI companion app designed to help creators grow their audiences on Facebook. There’s a waitlist for now.
YouTube updates Shorts by removing the dislike button, doubling playback speed, and more.
Rebecca Blackwell talks about diversifying income from multiple websites.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju talks about her use of AI in food blogging.
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, as well as industry news you need to know.
If you find this analysis valuable, please consider sharing 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 519 sites.
