Food bloggers report traffic, revenue plunge due to Google’s AI summaries

Food bloggers are reporting a sharp decline in website traffic and revenue, alleging that Google’s AI-generated search summaries are displacing their tested recipes and harming their livelihoods.

According to a Bloomberg report, creators who depend on search traffic are finding their work overshadowed by quick AI answers that frequently contain errors. Eb Gargano, who runs the blog Easy Peasy Foodie, stated her site traffic is already down 40 percent compared to the previous year. She cited an instance where an AI summary of her Christmas cake recipe incorrectly suggested a baking time of nearly four hours, which she warned would result in "charcoal."

Other food bloggers report that AI summaries often aggregate steps from multiple recipes, resulting in confusing, unsafe, or impossible instructions. These creators are also finding AI-generated copies of their work and images proliferating on social media and other websites.

The financial fallout is significant for many creators; one unnamed blogger reported a view loss of 80 percent over two years, forcing her to scale back her business operations.

Bloggers fear that if the trend continues, home cooks will increasingly rely on untested, AI-generated instructions rather than human-vetted recipes, eroding the fundamental trust that "Someone has cooked this before you."