SEO and Food Bloggers

I used to explain how Google and machines evaluate content with this analogy: imagine trying to decide which cake is the best using only measurable criteria—its weight, colors, shape, or design—without ever tasting it. Because machines cannot taste and experience food. Same goes for content, they cannot really understand it.

Good food is the output of good ingredients, good technique, and good taste, and that taste bit is where AI cannot really step in and do the work, thus the term "Frankenstein recipes" was coined for AI generated recipes that are just a blend of ingredients and steps from multiple sources.

That's not how good food is created. The skyscraper technique already produces subpar content, imagine skyscraper recipes 😄

And the problem is bigger right now, it's not just that AI Overviews but similar to how AI content is everywhere, AI is used to generate recipes and images of those recipes by food bloggers.... it's a complete mess.

The Horror Stories

Food bloggers like inspired taste and others have been documents alarming incidents, for example:

• CNN recently shared a story about a woman who was fooled by a recipe that simply didn’t work as promised. Only later did she discover that the recipe was AI-generated, the images were AI-generated, and even the “bloggers” behind the site were AI-generated too.
• Inspired taste shared multiple situations where their own recipes or videos were shared in an AI Overviews or AI Mode answer WITHOUT THEIR SITE BEING GIVEN CREDIT. The one thing SEOs, content writers and bloggers have been asking Google to do is give attribution to sources when it's due, and they still didn't. (AI Overviews did the same with DMarge btw, read more here)
• And the list goes on really... I like how Bloomberg phrased it:

What Happens Now?

• Right now it's bad news, but it's also good news. Since this is getting a lot of media coverage, we two things will happen:
  • Google will do something about it, as we can see corrections are starting to roll out for vocal food bloggers like Inspired taste:

• People will understand not to follow AI recipes because these recipes have not been tested in a kitchen.

How to do SEO for a Food Blog in 2026?

• Create great unique helpful content: I know it's very disappointing to put so much effort into something and not get rewarded, but this AI food slop era is not going to last.
• Convert users to subscribers: SEO is no longer just about getting the click, we need to maintain this click and build brand loyalty. Your best way to do that is to have a conversion funnel, get newsletter signups, build a community around your brand, connect with users on other social platforms. This is your immunity against anything that Google throws your way.
• Keep it real: people want to connect with other people, so keep your content real. Even sharing a failed recipe or your process of creating and testing recipes would keep your content authentic.
• Focus on original images: did you know that image search is the second largest search engine after traditional Google search. Include more photos, and follow the usual SEO image optimization checklist:
  • optimized image name
  • optimized alt tag
  • compress image size before uploading using tools like https://compressor.io/
• Focus on Video and Watch Pages: everyone knows that video content is important, and Youtube is a huge source of revenue for many food bloggers. Here's one thing I noticed a lot of recipe bloggers do on Youtube:
  • Here's one thing I noticed a lot of recipe bloggers do on Youtube: they have two video forms for their recipe, long and short, that way they get visibility twice one in traditional Youtube search results, and the other in Youtube shorts (smart, right?)
  • Embed videos on your website on a dedicate page just for that video. Why? If you cannot rank your videos on Youtube, maybe you can try ranking them in search via your website!
  • Video content in general should be your priority as it gives you chance to rank in traditional search results, in the video filter search results, and on Youtube and other social platforms too!

And That’s a Wrap (Almost 😄)

My goal in this blog is to shed the light on one of the verticals that are dealing with this new era of ai in search. It's definitely a challenge, and we need to continue to be vocal and advocate for ourselves.

That, and we should support independent small creators because they built the good part of the world wide web, the part that we enjoy consuming every day!

That's that for today folks and see you next newsletter!

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Disclaimer: LLMs were used to assist in wording and phrasing this blog.