How I'm The Chef Too Grew from 9.7K to 754K Organic Clicks and Reached 3,383 Monthly AI Sessions
I'm The Chef Too is a food and recipe site with a massive content opportunity — and one of FlyRank's strongest AI traffic growth stories. Clicks grew from 9.7K to 754K, average position improved from 16 to 4.9, and monthly AI sessions reached 3,383.
Key Results
Measured March 2025 to May 2026
About
I'm The Chef Too
I'm The Chef Too is a food and recipe website built around approachable, flavourful cooking. The site covers a wide range of cuisines and cooking styles — from weeknight dinners and one-pot meals to baking, grilling, and cultural recipes — always with a focus on making great food accessible to home cooks at every skill level.
Food is one of the most search-driven content categories on the internet. People search for recipes every single day — by ingredient, by occasion, by cuisine, by dietary preference, by cooking method. A recipe site's organic reach is directly tied to how many of those searches it shows up for. More relevant rankings means more readers, more returning visitors, and a larger audience for every new recipe published.
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A Strong Site, Limited Search Footprint
I'm The Chef Too before FlyRank.
When FlyRank began working with I'm The Chef Too, the site had 9.69K total clicks and 245K impressions over a baseline period. Average position was 16, placing most pages in the lower half of page one or on page two. The CTR of 4% suggested the pages that did rank were earning clicks, but the overall footprint was too limited to drive meaningful traffic volume.
Food search is enormously competitive. The major recipe sites have been building authority for years. But the long tail of food queries is vast and largely open — specific dishes, regional cuisine variations, ingredient substitutions, dietary adaptations, and cooking technique questions. A site with strong, well-optimized content can rank well for thousands of these terms and build significant traffic from them.
What We Found
Our audit uncovered the specific friction points capping organic growth.
Baseline showed 9.69K total clicks and 245K impressions with average position 16 — pages ranking but not in positions where click volume is meaningful
Food search has an enormous long-tail — specific dishes, regional cuisine variations, ingredient substitutions, dietary adaptations, cooking technique questions — that the site had not yet built coverage for
Recipe site benefited from content breadth combined with structure — clusters by cuisine, cooking method, and occasion allow ranking for multiple entry points into the same topic
AI platform visibility was just 40 sessions per month — a missed opportunity in a category where food questions are among the most common things people bring to ChatGPT and Perplexity
What FlyRank Optimized
Content depth, structure, and AI visibility — all at once.
The indexed page count grew from around 11,500 in mid-February 2026 to 16,500 by the end of April — a steady, consistent increase over approximately ten weeks. The content expansion focused on building out recipe coverage across the full range of topics the site serves, filling gaps in cuisine categories, meal types, dietary variants, and search-intent-driven recipe formats.
Recipe sites benefit particularly from breadth combined with structure. We built content that covered related recipes in clusters — for example, grouping chicken recipes by cooking method, by cuisine, and by occasion — so that the site could rank for multiple entry points into the same topic area rather than competing with itself or leaving gaps.
FlyRank worked through existing recipe pages to improve how well they matched what people were actually searching for. Recipe search intent has specific patterns: people want to see ingredients, time, and method clearly. Pages that bury this information or make it hard to skim lose both users and rankings. We improved page structure, heading clarity, and content organisation across the site's existing recipe library.
Internal linking within and across recipe clusters was also part of the work. Readers who finish one recipe are often looking for something related — a side dish, a variation, a similar flavour profile. Well-placed internal links keep readers engaged and signal to Google which content is most relevant for each topic area.
Content Expansion Across Recipes and Topics
Grew indexed pages steadily from ~11.5K in mid-February 2026 to 16.5K by end of April. Focused expansion on covering related recipes in clusters — grouping by cooking method, cuisine, and occasion so the site could rank for multiple entry points into the same topic area.
On-Page Optimization and Recipe SEO
Improved how well existing recipe pages matched what people were actually searching for — ingredients, time, and method presented clearly; headings structured for skimmability; content organized around the specific intent behind each query.
Internal Linking Within and Across Clusters
Built internal linking across recipe clusters so readers finishing one recipe could naturally move to something related — a side dish, a variation, a similar flavour profile — while signalling to Google which content is most relevant for each topic area.
Recipe cluster expansion
Grew indexed pages from ~11.5K to 16.5K, building recipe clusters by cuisine, cooking method, and occasion — giving the site multiple ranking entry points into every major food topic.
AI citation in the food category
Structured recipe content for AI extraction with clear ingredients, timing, and method presentation. Became a reference point for ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini for food and cooking questions.
Recipe SEO and intent alignment
Improved page structure, heading clarity, and content organisation across the existing recipe library — ensuring the most important information was easy to find for both users and search engines.
Internal linking across recipe topics
Built cross-recipe internal linking so readers and Google could naturally navigate between related recipes, variations, and ingredient guides — keeping engagement high and authority compounding.
From Invisible to Thousands of Daily Visits
The GSC performance chart shows a pattern that is striking in its clarity. For roughly the first 160 days of the tracked period, clicks and impressions were minimal. Then, around day 160, both metrics jumped sharply and simultaneously — a rapid transition from near-invisible to consistently driving thousands of daily visits.
From that inflection point onward, daily clicks settled into a range of 2,000 to 4,000, with impressions regularly reaching 250K to 500K per day. The pattern held and continued growing through to the end of the tracked period.
By the close of the full window, I'm The Chef Too had recorded 754K total clicks and 84.9M impressions. Average position improved from 16 to 4.9 — moving from the lower end of page one into the top five results on average. For a recipe site, that position difference is enormous in terms of click volume.
Recipe coverage expanded across cuisine clusters, meal types, and dietary variants. Existing pages improved for recipe-specific search intent. AI sessions appeared and began climbing in April.
Daily clicks climbed into the 2,000–4,000 range. Impressions regularly hitting 250K–500K per day. AI sessions reached 831 in September, confirming the content was being cited at scale.
Average position reached 4.9 — among the strongest improvements in the FlyRank portfolio. AI sessions climbed from 881 in December to 1,398 in January 2026 and kept accelerating.
754K total clicks. 84.9M impressions. Average position 4.9. Monthly AI sessions reached 3,383 in April 2026 — one of the highest AI traffic figures across all FlyRank clients.
The Results
Real Google Search Console Data
AI Visibility
A channel most brands are still ignoring.
Food is one of the most search-driven content categories on the internet. People search for recipes every single day — by ingredient, by occasion, by cuisine, by dietary preference, by cooking method. A recipe site's organic reach is directly tied to how many of those searches it shows up for. More relevant rankings means more readers, more returning visitors, and a larger audience for every new recipe published.
AI Traffic Over Time
Sessions by month
AI Traffic Breakdown by Source
Total 1,865
Performance
Before → After
Before FlyRank
After FlyRank
Measured March 2025 to May 2026
"Recipe content is now consumed across more surfaces than ever. People search Google, ask AI assistants for dinner ideas, and use Perplexity to research unfamiliar ingredients or techniques. A food site that shows up across all of those touchpoints — not just in Google's recipe carousel — builds an audience that keeps coming back and keeps growing. That is what I'm The Chef Too has built."
— I'm The Chef Too × FlyRank
Why It Worked
Recipe cluster content expansion gave the site multiple ranking entry points into every major food topic, driving the broad coverage that produces consistent top-five average position
Average position improvement from 16 to 4.9 placed the site in the positions where click-through rates are dramatically higher — a key driver of the 77.8x click growth
AI traffic growth to 3,383 monthly sessions is one of the strongest results in the FlyRank portfolio — driven by food content that is genuinely useful for the conversational AI use case
The 32.1% Perplexity share signals that the content is useful for research-oriented food queries, not just simple recipe lookups — a signal of genuine content quality and depth
The Growth Curve Is Still Climbing
The AI traffic data for I'm The Chef Too is one of the strongest growth curves across any FlyRank client case study. The site started at 40 AI sessions in January 2025. Growth was gradual through spring: 50 in February, 90 in March, then 419 in April — a sharp early jump that signalled the content was being picked up by AI platforms.
May dipped to 277 before growth resumed: 405 in June, 625 in July, 420 in August, 831 in September. After a brief October dip to 623, sessions climbed to 899 in November and held at 881 in December. Then the acceleration into 2026 was dramatic: 1,398 in January, 1,824 in February, 2,719 in March, and a new peak of 3,383 in April 2026.
That trajectory — from 40 sessions to 3,383 in sixteen months — is an 84x increase. It reflects a site whose content has become a genuine reference point for AI platforms answering food and recipe questions. Food is one of the most conversational AI categories: people ask AI assistants for dinner ideas, ingredient substitutions, recipe adaptations for dietary needs, and cooking tips.
The AI source breakdown for this site stands out from most. ChatGPT accounts for 54.5% of AI sessions — lower than the typical 80–87% seen across most brands. Perplexity contributes 32.1%, and Gemini adds 10.0%. A Perplexity share of 32.1% is notable — Perplexity is heavily used for research and detailed query responses, and food content fits naturally into that use case.
What's Next
The roadmap for compounding on the results already achieved.
Continue expanding recipe clusters into undercovered cuisines and dietary categories to maintain the growth trajectory
Build AI Overviews optimization for recipe queries increasingly served in Google's generative answer formats
Develop structured recipe schema across the full content library to maximize rich result eligibility
Monitor AI traffic acceleration — the trend from 881 to 3,383 in four months suggests further compounding growth ahead
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