HubSpot lost 81% of its organic traffic in 12 months, from 14.8 million monthly visits to 2.8 million. Yet the company’s revenue held steady, and its product pages barely moved.
The pages that collapsed targeted high-volume queries that HubSpot had no credible expertise in. The pages that survived aligned with the brand’s core competency. SEO still works. Optimizing pages one at a time stopped being enough.
Key Takeaways
- Pages no longer stand alone. When a site publishes heavily outside its real expertise, even well-optimized pages become vulnerable to site-wide devaluation.
- HubSpot’s traffic loss was caused by authority dilution, not poor quality. The pages that collapsed weren’t bad in isolation; they failed because they stretched the brand beyond its legitimate domain.
- Generic informational content is the first to disappear. Zero-click search and AI summaries absorb definitions and templates, while product and use-case pages tied to real expertise remain more stable.
- Category ownership protects visibility. Even as blog traffic fell, HubSpot continued to rank, convert, and be cited, where it is a clear leader in CRM and marketing automation.
- Entity visibility matters more than raw traffic. Brands that are consistently mentioned in AI answers can lose large volumes of low-intent traffic without hurting revenue or market position.
What Actually Happened to HubSpot Traffic?
Between January 2024 and January 2025, HubSpot’s blog subdomain collapsed from 3.94 million monthly visits to 1.1 million, a 72% drop. The main product pages stayed nearly flat: 839,000 visits to 819,000.
The timeline aligned with Google’s algorithm updates:
| Date | Event | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| March 2024 | Core Update | Negative trend established |
| September 2024 | Continued decline | Traffic fell to 7.5M |
| November 2024 | Brief recovery | Spike to 13.5M |
| December 2024 | Core + Spam Update | Catastrophic drop to 8.6M |
The damage concentrated entirely on informational blog content. Transactional, product-focused pages held steady.
Which Pages Disappeared, And Which Survived?
The pages that lost rankings read like a content farm playbook:
- “The 100+ Most Famous Quotes of All Time”
- “How to Type the Shrug Emoji in 2 Seconds Flat”
- “What Are Good Weaknesses to Say in an Interview?”
- “Excel VLOOKUP tutorials”
- “Resignation letter examples”
These ranked for high-volume queries but shared a fatal flaw: they had nothing to do with HubSpot’s core business. A CRM company has no credible claim to authority on Excel formulas or job interview advice.
Pages that maintained or gained rankings:
- “Email Analytics: 8 Email Marketing Metrics You Should Track”
- “7 Habits of a Highly Effective Landing Page”
- “20 Great Examples of PowerPoint Presentation Design”
These aligned with HubSpot’s expertise in email marketing, conversion optimization, and business communications.
Why Did Google Penalize HubSpot’s Blog?
1. Expertise Mismatch Triggered Site-Wide Devaluation
Google’s Helpful Content Update introduced a site-wide signal that evaluates overall content quality. When a site contains substantial “unhelpful” content (material created to rank rather than serve users), even high-quality pages suffer reduced visibility.
With hundreds of pages targeting queries outside its expertise, HubSpot’s blog likely triggered classification as a content farm. This dragged down even legitimate marketing content.
2. Zero-Click Search Eliminated the Upside
By December 2024, 65% of Google searches ended without a click. Generic informational queries, HubSpot’s TOFU specialty, get answered directly through featured snippets and AI Overviews. Users seeking definitions or templates have no reason to click through.
3. Traffic Redistributed to Actual Experts
Who captured HubSpot’s lost traffic?
| Brand | Dec 2023 Share | Dec 2024 Share | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft | 4% | 7% | Builds Excel, authoritative by definition |
| 0.35% | 3% | Community forums demonstrate lived experience | |
| Adobe | 0.35% | 3% | Product authority on design queries |
Google redistributed traffic toward entities with demonstrable subject-matter expertise, regardless of historical rankings or brand recognition.
What Does This Reveal About Modern SEO?
Page-Level Optimization Is No Longer Sufficient
Traditional SEO asked: “Does this page contain the right keywords and earn sufficient backlinks to rank?”
Google now asks: “Is this brand a credible authority on this topic, and should it be cited?”
HubSpot’s product pages survived because the company has clear entity-level authority for CRM and marketing automation. The blog’s generic content lacked this grounding. When Google tightened requirements, visibility evaporated.
Entity Authority > Traffic Volume
HubSpot’s CMO Kipp Bodnar articulated the shift: “We never cared about vanity metrics like traffic. We became increasingly focused on cultivating influence rather than just providing information.”
The company maintains a 35.3% AI share of voice in its category and appears in 95-100% of top prompts related to CRM. From an entity visibility perspective, HubSpot strengthened even as traffic metrics collapsed.
Revenue Stability Despite Traffic Collapse
The business didn’t collapse alongside traffic. One analyst noted: “People who harp on traffic miss the fact that HubSpot’s business model allowed the SEO team to reap the benefits: REVENUE.”
The traffic loss came from low-intent, informational queries that rarely converted. Product pages for money keywords held steady.
How to Audit Your Content for This Risk
SEO consultant Aleyda Solis developed a diagnostic framework after analyzing HubSpot’s drop:
The 5-Question Audit
- Have rankings dropped for queries relevant to your business? If not, the traffic loss may be inconsequential.
- Are dropped pages targeting queries you have no expertise in? These should be pruned or redirected.
- Are the right pages ranking for relevant queries? You may have cannibalization issues.
- Do better pages already exist for these topics? Consolidate rather than duplicate.
- Can you provide more authoritative answers than competitors? If not, improvement won’t help.
For HubSpot, most dropped pages targeted irrelevant queries and lacked expertise alignment. Pruning was the appropriate response, which they began implementing in late January 2025.
What Should You Do Differently?
Quick Wins (This Week)
| Action | Time | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Audit content for topical relevance | 2-3 hours | Identify pages targeting off-topic queries |
| Check if product pages rank for money keywords | 30 min | Verify transactional SEO remains intact |
| Search your brand in ChatGPT/Perplexity | 15 min | See if AI cites you for category queries |
Strategic Shifts (Ongoing)
- Depth over breadth – Own narrow domains where you possess unique expertise
- Prune aggressively – Remove or redirect content outside your core competency
- Entity clarity – Implement Schema.org markup connecting your brand to recognized topics
- Monitor AI citations – Track whether LLMs mention your brand for category-relevant prompts
What Now?
HubSpot’s 81% traffic drop marks a shift in how Google evaluates content. The company’s blog collapsed because it violated emerging principles of topical authority. The product pages thrived because they leveraged clear entity-level credibility.
The metrics that matter now:
- Brand mentions in AI answers – Does ChatGPT cite you for category queries?
- Entity recognition – Can AI systems confidently associate your brand with relevant topics?
- Transactional keyword stability – Do you maintain rankings for high-intent queries?
- Revenue quality – Are visitors converting, regardless of volume?
HubSpot passed the entity test. Ask any LLM, “What’s the best CRM for small businesses,” and HubSpot appears in nearly every response. The blog content that collapsed would never have.
The companies that win in AI-mediated search will have entity-level credibility strong enough that AI systems cite them reflexively. Traffic volume matters less than ever.
Traffic dashboards show page-level performance. To understand your entity-level visibility, how AI systems perceive and cite your brand, you need a different lens. Book a call with ReSO to know where your brand stands across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
