If you read our recent post on Pinch of Yum’s traffic trends from 2024 to 2026, you’ve already got a pretty good idea of the key headline: search dipped slightly as a share of total traffic, but it’s still the biggest driver by far!
That raises an obvious follow-up question: if search is still doing the heavy lifting, how is the Pinch of Yum team keeping it that way? That is an excellent question, and luckily for you, we recently sat down with them to dig into the strategy behind the numbers. Let’s get into it!
Quick methodology note before we dive in! Most the data below compares August 2024 to August 2026. A few of the metrics from Google Search Console had to use August 2026 as the earlier comparison point instead, since the tool only retains 16 months of data. We’ll be sure to call those out as we go!
Search Traffic in Context: A Quick Recap
Search’s share of total traffic dropped from 67.7% to 54.7% between August 2024 and August 2026, a decline of roughly 13%. That’s not because search traffic collapsed; it’s because other channels (direct, Pinterest, Facebook, and email) all grew as a share of the mix over the same period, which thins out search’s slice of the pie.
Within search, Google remains dominant, moving ever so slightly from 99.0% to 98.4% of search sessions. Other search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo picked up a bit of ground, but they still pale in comparison.
So what exactly drove the shift in search traffic? There are a few forces behind it, and they’re worth talking about before we get into what Pinch of Yum is doing about them!
Increased Competition (and a More Diversified Traffic Mix)
The key takeaway here is that search didn’t get weaker — everything else just got that much stronger! 💪 As direct traffic, social, and email all grew, search’s share naturally came down even without search traffic itself dwindling.
The Rise of AI Overviews
I’m sure we all predicted this one (or perhaps we didn’t? We live in weird times now). The most striking pattern in the POY team’s data is that impressions roughly doubled year-over-year, while clicks dipped slightly. The combination of being shown far more often but not converting that visibility into proportionally more clicks indicates that AI Overviews are increasingly answering queries directly on the results page. We’ll dig into this in more detail in the Search Console section below.
Changes in User Search Behavior
When we talk about search, it’s important to think outside of the box. It’s not just about how people find content; it’s what they do once they land on your blog! In Pinch of Yum’s case, both average engagement time and pages per session for organic search visitors went up (+8.6% and +5.7%, respectively) year-over-year. This is a really good sign overall, since it indicates that when people land on the site, they are genuinely interested in the content and engaging with it. A true testament to the great content that POY is putting out there!
How Pinch of Yum Has Adapted Their SEO Strategy
So! Now that we’ve painted a pretty good picture of POY’s search traffic landscape, here’s what the team had to say on the changes they’ve made to their SEO strategy.
Leaning Into Roundup Content
One of the most meaningful shifts in the data: roundup and list posts grew from a small slice of the pie (2.8% of top-page traffic) to a meaningful chunk (13.5%)—that’s nearly 1 in 7 pageviews among top-performing pages! 🤯 Recently published roundups (think seasonal dinner and recipe collections) are now landing in the site’s top 100 pages by traffic, a big shift from two years ago.
One thing worth noting: this figure reflects traffic from all sources to those pages, not just organic search. Since organic search makes up the majority of traffic in both periods, though, it’s a pretty close read on what’s happening in search, too.
Doubling Down on E-E-A-T
Over the past year, the team has put real effort into strengthening E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) signals across the site. They’ve taken steps to revamp Lindsay’s author page and adjust byline and publish/updated date formatting so it’s clearer to both readers and search engines who’s behind the content and how current it is. Hooray for humanity! 🙌
What exactly is E-E-A-T, anyway?Prioritizing High-Impact Updates Over Small Tweaks
Instead of making minor edits across a large volume of posts (timesuck much?), they are focusing on fewer, more substantial updates by adding new features, reshooting photos, and re-testing and adjusting recipes rather than just refreshing a sentence or two. Quality > quantity!
What should you update when you republish content?What the Search Console Data Shows
By now, you’re probably thinking to yourself, “But where are the numbers?! We want to see the numbers!!!!”
And to that, I say, “Allllllrighty then. Let’s get into these numbers. 😎”
(Note: all Search Console figures below compare August 2025 to August 2026, due to Search Console’s data retention limits.)
Clicks and Impressions
Total clicks were down slightly (−4.1%), while total impressions were up dramatically (+100.9%) over the same period. Read together, these two numbers point to a single underlying shift, which the CTR data below makes even clearer. ⬇️
CTR: The Clearest Signal
Sitewide click-through rate dropped from 3.3% to 1.6%, roughly cut in half. This pattern holds up at the individual query level, too: several queries show large jumps in impressions with clicks either flat or declining, even for queries where ranking position actually improved. That combination (ranking better, but getting clicked less) is a strong signal that AI Overviews and AI Mode are increasingly answering queries in place, without sending a click through to the site.
Rankings: A More Complicated Picture
Sitewide average position improved substantially (by roughly two-thirds!), but this number can be a little misleading. A large wave of new pages and queries ranking for the first time is pulling up that sitewide average, while a closer look at the site’s already-established top queries tells a different story: 63.4% lost position, 29.3% gained position, and 7.3% held steady.
In other words, Pinch of Yum is gaining a lot of new visibility, but among the queries it was already ranking well a year ago, it lost more ground than it gained. That’s an important nuance to take note of because a rising sitewide average doesn’t necessarily mean every part of the site is trending up!
What This Means for Food Bloggers
So now that we’ve broken this all down and we’ve read through all of the data, what narrative is this telling us exactly? You might be trying to piece this all together into something you can actually use, right? Here’s where we’d start:
- Don’t just look at your sitewide averages: A rising average position (or growing impressions) can mask real losses happening among your established, previously top-performing content. Be sure to segment your data (e.g., new vs. established queries) before drawing conclusions.
- Watch CTR, not just rankings or impressions: If you’re showing up more often, but earning fewer clicks, that’s a different problem than not ranking at all. Some fixes you could implement include: stronger titles, richer snippets, and content built to stand out (more on that in our E-E-A-T mention below!), even when an AI Overview is sitting at the top.
- Invest in E-E-A-T fundamentals: Arguably one of the most important takeaways here, as we’re all aware of just how prevalent AI content is in our circles. Author pages, clear bylines, and visible publish/update dates aren’t substantial updates, but they’re strong trust signals for readers (and, by extension, search engines).
- Make your content updates count: Repeat after me: Your time is precious! Rather than focusing on the minutiae of smaller updates across your entire archive, consider whether a smaller number of substantial refreshes (new photos, retested recipes, added features) might serve your existing content better.
- Don’t sleep on roundup content: If your site is recipe-heavy, roundups and list posts can become a meaningful traffic driver in their own right, not just a nice-to-have!
What has your search traffic looked like in the last couple of years? Have you noticed a shift in clicks vs. impressions on your own site? What shifts have you made to your SEO strategy? Let us know in the comments below!