• by Melynda Fuller , December 12, 2018

Meredith Corp. properties Allrecipes, EatingWell, Cooking Light and MyRecipes, among its other food brands, reported their biggest Thanksgiving holiday traffic ever this past November.

In all, the brands captured 25% of category search and counted nearly 11 million visits on Thanksgiving Day, with 1.98 million page view per hour recorded the previous night.

This year, Allrecipes.com clocked 21.3 million visits over that two-day period, as opposed to 20.7 million last year, while MyRecipes saw a strong performance across Southern cuisine search terms, capturing 12% of the search share for deviled eggs, one of the top 10 most-searched Thanksgiving-related terms.

Among search terms, “Sweet potato casserole” is No. 1, and Meredith captured 28% of its search share.

“For our foods sites, November has some of the highest traffic days, but the month of December is our biggest month with much more varied interests,” Stan Pavlovsky, president of Meredith Digital, told Publishers Daily. “A strong November portends a strong December.”

With the increase in traffic, Meredith is able to attract more advertiser demand. This year, the company had a national retailer book a Thanksgiving sponsorship and a food company book Thanksgiving sides. Meredith declined to share the names of those companies.

Looking at the rest of the holiday season, Pavlovsky notes: “Based on trends we’re seeing across verticals, including entertainment and celebrity, we believe Americans may be looking for feel-good content after a dramatic year.” According to him, coverage related to the British royals' Thanksgiving, and specifically Meghan Markle, performed 25% better than the Kardashian Thanksgiving coverage.

Entertainment Weekly saw double-digit growth during Thanksgiving around content related to curated recommendations on films and television shows, including holiday programming popular during the season.

“We’ve spent a lot of time this past year digging into what the holiday season means for our reader,” said Sarah Martens, holidays-e ntertaining editor, BHG.com.

That effort includes using search intent research tools like Google Trends and looking at past performance and proprietary insights and data. “We’re constantly looking at what resonates with our audience on social media — we want to be part of the conversation. For us, that means creating service-driven content that our readers love and want to share with their friends,” Martens added.

This year, some of those sought-after trends-turned-content include black Christmas trees, vintage-style ceramic Christmas trees and weighted blankets, a popular gift item. The data and insights team helps to support the creation of this content.

“By December, our gift guides are filled with the latest, greatest gift ideas based on the best of what we’ve discovered in the marketplace throughout the year,” said Heather Morgan Shott, senior director of content strategy and operations at RealSimple.com, BHG.com, SouthernLiving.com and MarthaStewart.com.

“This is our most important period from a revenue perspective,” Pavlovsky said. “Advertising partners want to participate and reach our consumers, and it shows in revenue and increased pricing of our inventory.”