Hello!
While food bloggers were relatively quiet this past week, with only 31% posting a new recipe, Christina Hitchcock of It is a Keeper posted 11 times. Anjali Shah of The Picky Eater had the fastest-growing Instagram account (2.2% growth in the past week), while Crowded Kitchen grew by the largest amount (8K).
Most Popular Recipe Categories & Ingredients
Dinner, Gluten-Free, and Fall were the most popular categories; Chicken, Pumpkin, and Apple were the most popular ingredients.
News Roundup
California approves its first non-ultra-processed food label, something to keep an eye on if readers want these types of ingredients included in recipes.
Eater reviews 12 new cookbooks out this fall for inspiration.
Meta launches its AI agent Muse in the US. Looks like it might be useful to analyze your Facebook and Instagram content, among other things.
Raptive officially launches its ad-supported community platform and gives 50% of applicable ad revenue to creators.
Food Blogger Pro launches its Claude for Food Bloggers course.
Google’s top 10 ranking factors, according to 131 SEO professionals. Relevance, backlinks, and quality were their top 3.
YouTube is giving feedback on Shorts before they’re published to help you improve them.
Google once again says sometimes there’s no one right answer for SEO.
Nerdpress shares how they’re using AI workflows with the Food Blogger Pro podcast.
Tastemaker Conference discount code - get $50 off your ticket!
About Best Served Hot
I’m Rachel Cunliffe, food blog designer + statistician at cre8d design. Every Sunday, Best Served Hot provides exclusive trend analysis, 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 that have posted in the past six months. Lifestyle, cocktail-only, and aggregator sites are excluded. This week we’re tracking 509 sites. No new sites were added this week.
