Hello!
Two serious PHP security vulnerabilities were found this week. Ensure your host has applied this patch, and if you manage your own server, upgrade PHP immediately.
Food bloggers posted much more last week than they have in a while. New terms in the charts this week include brown butter, Halloween, viral, classic, stuffed, and no-bake.
Kasey from All Things Mamma grew her Instagram by the biggest percentage this week (2.6%), while The Loopy Whisk and Crowded Kitchen grew by 7,000. On Facebook, Crowded Kitchen grew its followers by 57,000!
News Roundup
Two serious PHP vulnerabilities were discovered and patched, which impact anyone running a WordPress website. See details.
Google has an internal “clutter score” which is used to penalize sites. This could include ads, intrusive pop-ups, floating videos, and third-party scripts. Casey Markee provides SEO advice for food bloggers.
It’s worth reading an in-depth study about over 2,100 AI-slop recipe sites which have been made for ad revenue. None were connected to ad network Raptive, 8 to Journey.
Paid podcast membership options are now available from Spotify and dynamic podcast ads launch in Substack. Substack has also added new brand sponsorship options.
Raptive launches Compass, an AI dashboard for publishers with recommendations and the ability to connect to external AI tools.
Dahn Boquist talks to Food Blogger Pro about letting go of SEO and the success of providing meal plans.
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.
Methodology: Top food blogs are defined as those running Raptive ads with 100K+ followers, DA 40+, and posted in the past six months. Lifestyle, cocktail-only, and aggregator sites excluded. This week we’re tracking 505 sites.
