This Thanksgiving has become a turning point for me as a food blogger. Google’s AI, particularly through Gemini 3, is reshaping my recipes and diverting precious traffic, leaving me and my fellow creators in a tough spot.
For over a decade, we could count on holiday traffic, something integral for our revenue. Now, with AI answers usurping our well-tested recipes, home cooks are left following confusing, misaligned instructions that I’ve heard can be quite problematic.
Recently, I’ve noticed how Google’s AI Overviews pull information from various bloggers, often overshadowing the actual sources. Many creators, myself included, have experienced traffic declines ranging from 30% to 80%, making this one of our most challenging seasons yet.
AI-generated content is also cluttering platforms like Pinterest and Etsy, blending genuine cooking expertise with poorly conceived AI inventions.
Google has described their AI Overviews as merely a starting point, but I, along with others, see a different story. For example, Eb Gargano reported a staggering 40% drop in traffic because of AI summaries making grievous errors like suggesting over-baking a cake. Adam Gallagher finds his recipes amalgamated with competitors’, resulting in a 30% decline in his cocktail click-through rate.
I have also seen Gemini 3 utilizing our photos in new interactive graphics, leaning dangerously close to what feels like plagiarized content.
Experts like Sarah Leung have shared similar experiences, with AI summaries dominating search results, diminishing years of hard work to just another step in someone else’s AI-driven process.
Some bloggers have even found their content being mirrored by AI-run sites, tweaking their original ideas and altering personal images.
The big picture is concerning. More households trust AI for their holidays’ meals, unaware that they’re deviating from traditional cooking principles. We, the creators behind today’s culinary content, feel like we’re fading into the background, overshadowed by technology that ironically relies on our own innovations.
In essence, AI still can’t replace the foundational promise of a recipe—a human touch and tested insight.
Holidays like Thanksgiving are at risk of being distorted through algorithm-driven remixing, alienating genuine tradition-driven cooking.
I share in the sentiment of Bjork Ostrom from Pinch of Yum, who calls this an existential moment for us as content creators, not just in terms of visibility but the very creation process itself.
You can read more about this in the Bloomberg piece titled AI Slop Recipes Are Taking Over the Internet — And Thanksgiving Dinner.
Inspired by this post on Search Engine Land.
Leave a Reply