Earlier this year, HubSpot went viral — and not exactly in a good way. A few companies posted data suggesting that we had lost 80% of our blog traffic. Overnight, the news was all over X and LinkedIn.
As marketers ourselves, we know better than anyone that hot takes drive clicks. But, what actually happened to our traffic? Have we really reached the end of SEO as we know it? And is this really the downfall of HubSpot’s core strategy?
As one of the people who built HubSpot’s SEO strategy from the ground up, I’d like to think I can offer a bit more of a nuanced perspective. And while I’d never begrudge our fellow content creators jumping aboard the latest hot take bandwagon, in this case, I’d argue that the reality is a bit more complex than social media might have you think.
That’s why I wrote this post: Not just to set the record straight (spoilers: no, the end of HubSpot is not nigh) but also to help marketers understand the very real challenges that today’s AI-powered search ecosystem poses. I’ll also share the steps marketers can take to meet those challenges and come out ahead.
What Actually Happened to HubSpot’s Traffic
Let’s start with what actually happened. There are three important pieces to the traffic puzzle that the clickbait headlines and apocalyptic posts have (by and large) ignored.
1. Shifting from Information to Influence
None of us could have predicted the incredible impact that AI tools like ChatGPT have had over the last few years. However, we have been taking steps to keep HubSpot’s strategy relevant since long before the recent hype cycle.
Specifically, as far back as early 2020, we began to see that Google was demanding a new approach. While our original SEO strategy focused on providing concrete, informational content, over the last five years search engines have increasingly rewarded influence rather than just information — and we adapted our strategy accordingly.
We invested in channels like YouTube, podcasts, and social media. We built out HubSpot Academy, and, importantly, we acquired the founder-centric news site The Hustle. These platforms came together to transform our content from largely informational into an ever-present part of our target customers’ lives.
We never cared about vanity metrics like traffic, but especially in recent years, we became increasingly focused on cultivating influence rather than just providing information. You can see the results in posts like this one, where a HubSpot customer describes the literal years-long journey he took to discover our brand, fall under our influence, and, eventually, buy our product.
The point was never to maximize page views. We wanted to build influence so that when people eventually need a product that we sell, they come to us first.
Recent updates to Google’s algorithm added new urgency to this shift toward influence over information, but these changes were already in motion years before the recent media kerfuffle.
Today, Google is pushing people to dial into their core areas of expertise, and they’re rewarding sites that focus on content that’s relevant to those areas. That’s a bit of a departure from how it used to work, when search algorithms rewarded quantity alongside quality.
But, we had already been working to dial up the quality piece of our content equation, to focus in on the content that’s most relevant to our customers. This choice put us in a good position to get ahead of these changes when they emerged.
2. The Disruption (and Opportunity) of LLMs
The next major trend that everyone has been talking about is the so-called “death of blue links.” With the proliferation of AI assistants and automatically-generated summaries, a lot of questions that users used to click a link to answer can now be answered without ever leaving your ChatGPT window or Google AI Overview.
There’s no denying that these no-click searches have cannibalized a lot of traditional search traffic. At the same time, we’ve also seen that HubSpot content actually performs really well within AI-generated responses. Why is our traffic from LLMs increasing? Because of the diverse, influence-focused playbook we just described.
Today, we’re not just influencing humans — we’re influencing robots, too. We are marketing to both, and as LLMs become an increasingly relevant platform, that investment has begun paying off.
I saw this just the other day: I was in a Slack thread with a colleague, and they were using ChatGPT to do some research on the new AI model, DeepSeek. What did ChatGPT show them? A link to Kieren’s own video on DeepSeek.
By developing high-quality content on topics where we have real expertise, we’ve been able to cultivate influence among humans and algorithms alike. So, yes, we might be getting fewer clicks from search (just like everyone else is). But, we’re also getting new visibility for our most relevant content, as these LLMs recognize our content as high-quality and offer it as reference materials to their users.
3. The Strength of Transactional Search
The last trend worth noting is that while traffic has indeed fallen for many of our informational keywords, performance for transactional keywords is as strong as ever.
In fact, when it comes to keywords focused on specific products, actions, or problems that users need help with, our search volume has actually grown substantially. This is important because while our informational content strategy has shifted toward a more influence-focused approach, our transactional search volume remains an important driver of conversions.
Growing Search Traffic in an AI-Powered World
So, what does this mean for your business? Of course, I can’t tell you exactly what to do, and I can’t predict the future. But here are three strategies that we’re pursuing — and that I think are likely to benefit other marketers.
1. Double down on depth, not breadth.
First, if you’re trying to build an SEO strategy, start by asking yourself: Do I have unique data? Unique insights? A unique customer base with a unique perspective?
If you do, you should be able to own that area of expertise and get some strong search traffic around it. But if you don’t, then a generic LLM could likely create the same content as you … which means you’re probably not going to get much traffic for it.
In today’s landscape, you have to be smart. You have to have a highly differentiated point of view, highly differentiated data, and a clear reason why you’re uniquely qualified to share your story. Without that, you’ll struggle to be successful long-term.
When SEO first emerged, a lot of effort was spent on developing broad coverage. But with AI, coverage is no longer the problem. Today, what people need is depth. They need high-quality, expert-backed takes on their questions. As long as that’s something you can deliver consistently, you’ll still have a good shot at sustained success.
2. Optimize for both humans and robots.
Step one is doubling down on the content that you’re uniquely qualified to create. Step two is figuring out how to get that content to appear in the AI-generated responses that are increasingly relevant for many markets.
Fortunately, we’ve found that the same strategy that works for humans works for robots, too: It’s all about influence. To succeed in an AI landscape, you need to think about your content not just with respect to the traffic and clicks it can generate in the near-term, but with respect to the influence it can foster over the long haul.
3. Continue with transactional SEO.
Finally, we’ve found that while recent advances in AI and search algorithms have dramatically transformed many aspects of the online content landscape, transactional search has remained relatively unchanged.
What does this look like in practice? Transactional search is when someone searches for a keyword that’s specific to your product or the problem they’re looking to solve.
A lot of SEO has traditionally focused on broader informational content. This content may be interesting to your customers, but that doesn’t solve an immediate problem. Instead, transactional search is also an important piece of the SEO equation … and we’ve been seeing that it’s still well worth the investment.
A New Era of SEO
SEO has always been about providing value to the customer. In the past, that meant information, but now, it’s about influence and highly differentiated expertise. In today’s landscape, success hinges on obsessing over what value humans can provide that AI can’t.
Here at HubSpot, we’re learning right along with you. We’ll make some missteps, to be sure. However, we’ve found that overall, our strategy still seems to be working — no matter what you might have heard online.
To learn more about lead-scoring tactics and marketing growth strategies, check out the full episode of Marketing Against the Grain below:
This blog series is in partnership with Marketing Against the Grain, the video podcast. It digs deeper into ideas shared by marketing leaders Kipp Bodnar (HubSpot’s CMO) and Kieran Flanagan (SVP, Marketing at HubSpot) as they unpack growth strategies and learn from standout founders and peers.
