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Hey Reader,

We hope you're doing well! As we look ahead to May, it's a great time to update your homepages with your favorite brunch and BBQ recipes for Mother's Day and Memorial Day!

Before we jump into the latest news in the food creator space, we wanted to make sure you've tuned into our April podcast episodes (so many good ones!):

• ​How to Write a Cookbook Proposal and Land a Book Deal with Sally Ekus​
• ​What Food Bloggers Need to Know About AI Search and the Fight for Fair Traffic with Adam Gallagher from Inspired Taste​​
• ​How to Keep Creating Without Burning Out with Ashlea Carver from All the Healthy Things​​
• ​Reinventing a Food Blog After an 80% Traffic Drop with Carrie Forrest from Clean Eating Kitchen​​

As a reminder, we'll be releasing a podcast version of this blogging newsletter on Tuesday, April 28, so stay tuned for that! Without further ado, let's jump into some news articles!

1. The 2026 report: State of marketing

The HubSpot 2026 State of Marketing Report has a few findings that are particularly relevant for food bloggers navigating the current landscape. The most important takeaway is that human-centered, personality-driven content is taking the cake right now. Nearly half of marketers believe AI makes content so easy to produce that it's becoming less effective overall, and 63% say they need more unique, human content to stand out — which is good news for creators who lead with their voice, their story, and their perspective.

Short-form video is delivering the highest ROI of any content format by a wide margin — 104% more marketers named it their most valuable channel compared to last year. Email marketing remains a top-five channel by both usage and ROI, reinforcing what many successful food bloggers are already experiencing firsthand.

The overarching message for food bloggers is to invest in video, build your email list, show up as a real human, and let your distinct voice be the thing AI can't replicate.

​Read the full report on Hubspot here.​

2. AI buttons: Smart UX play, risky GEO tactic, or both?

In Casey Markee's latest article for Search Engine Land he breaks down the pros and cons of AI buttons (available from plugins like Feast, Hubbub, and Shareaholic).

The purpose of AI buttons is to improve the user experience on your site by quickly answering questions about your recipe, summarizing your post, saving the page for later, or prompting the reader's AI assistant to remember your site in the future. As Casey says, "AI buttons are less about SEO and more about the emerging AI discovery layer."

The most used features of AI buttons on recipe sites are ingredient substitutions, scaling recipes, dietary modifications, and recipe summaries (which most SEO-optimized recipe blog posts already feature).

AI buttons alone don’t appear to impact SEO significantly but can improve user experience, while AI summaries do seem to improve SEO.

So what concerns should you be aware of when it comes to AI buttons? Do these buttons encourage readers to leave your site? Are bloggers training readers to rely on AI instead of... them? Could this be seen as AI manipulation and eventually result in Google penalizing sites for GEO hacking? These are all valid concerns, and ones to keep an eye on as we learn more.

If you're thinking about implementing AI Summaries or AI Buttons on your site, Casey shares numerous best practices to consider as you get started.

​Read the full article on Search Engine Land here.​

3. Instagram tests clickable links in post captions for Meta Verified users

Instagram is testing a feature that would allow clickable links directly inside post captions (!!!) something the platform has never permitted thus far.

The feature is currently limited to Meta Verified subscribers, and appears to be tied to higher-tier paid plans. Access seems to vary by account and possibly by geography. If rolled out more broadly, caption links would be a big shift for food creators — allowing direct, per-post traffic attribution for the first time and enabling creators to send traffic from in-feed posts. Here's to hoping!

​Read the full article on PPC Land here.

4. Google tests AI-generated titles in search results

As part of a small experiment, Google is now testing replacing original titles with AI-generated titles in traditional search results, "rewriting tone and intent to better match queries and boost engagement."

We're crossing our fingers and toes that this stays an experiment — we know how much time and research goes into crafting recipe titles. With Google suggesting that they may generate completely new titles for your blog posts, they could negate those efforts, change your original meaning, ruin your brand voice, and result in a mismatch with user intent.

​Read the full article on Search Engine Land here.​

And that's it for us this month! See you back here in May. 🌷