How HubSpot Became the #1 CRM in AI Search (A Case Study)

Today, more and more buyers are starting their journey with an AI search. You can ask ChatGPT to compare products or use an AI-powered platform like Perplexity. Or they simply google an offer and read the AI ​​overview without clicking on a link.

HubSpot recognized that our buyers were moving from search engines to answer engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity – but we had no reliable way to measure AI visibility and understand whether our AEO strategies were working.

So in June 2025, the HubSpot marketing team began working with XFunnel, an AEO tool that allowed us to measure and optimize our AI visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and more. Here’s what we learned.

Table of contents

Structure of our AEO measuring system

Defining the buyer’s journey across response engines for timely follow-up

The first question we had to answer was: When a potential customer asks an answer engine about a problem that our products solve, is HubSpot the answer? To find out, we defined the buyer’s journey across response engines:

Product-driven AEO

We set up XFunnel containers for each product line.

The AEO measurement architecture included:

• Top-level brand container “HubSpot” for comprehensive brand monitoring
• Eight dedicated product containers: CRM, Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, Content Hub, Commerce Hub, Data Hub and Breeze
• Feature-specific views within each product container (example: “Email Automation” in Marketing Hub)

This structure meant that sub-teams could conduct experiments, track improvements, and optimize the AEO performance of their specific product, while at the same time giving us a bird’s eye view of our overall AEO strategy.

AEO KPIs we measure

Once we defined the prompts, we were able to identify and begin improving our four core AEO metrics:

• Reply Engine Visibility (%): How often HubSpot appears for target queries.
• Share of voice of the answer engine (%): How often HubSpot appears compared to competitors for the same searches.
• Response Engine Quotes: How often are HubSpot pages cited as a source in AI answers?
• Response Engine Citation Share (%): How often are HubSpot’s pages cited for these searches compared to our competitors?

How we built our three-pillar AEO strategy

After analyzing the data, we found that a successful AEO strategy relies on:

1. AEO-friendly content on your own website with all the information answering machines need about your company and its products.
2. A strong external presence in the key sources that train and source information from response engines.

On this basis, we have developed a three-pillar strategy:

1. On-site content optimization.
2. External reinforcement.
3. Community engagement and forum growth.

Pillar 1: On-site content optimization

Our AI visibility scores were good from the start, but Xfunnel showed that our citation scores were weak. Reply engines didn’t often link to pages on HubSpot’s website. Brand awareness is a priority, but mention increases the likelihood of influencing the response (and generating direct traffic through AI).

After our growth team analyzed the Xfunnel data, we realized we needed more highly specific content to match the hyper-personalized responses AI generates for users.

When answer search engines received purchasing questions or industry reviews, they struggled to find HubSpot citation-worthy content. We needed to create content tailored to our key buyer personas.

“Will HubSpot work? My Business?” Personalization is all about being able to answer this question.

Industry-specific content

Many interested parties want to know whether a solution is right for them her Industry. We created Industry solution sites at scale using an AI content system. We used AI to generate the content from HubSpot’s case study library and reviewed it with humans before going live.

Since we know that AI likes structured data, we have used the breadcrumb and FAQ schema on these industry solution pages.

92% were ultimately cited by answer search engines, resulting in a 49% increase in AI visibility.

We’ve also published software comparison articles for target industries (e.g. “5 Best CRMs for Construction Companies”). We saw a 642% increase in citations for these posts and a 58% increase in overall mentions.

FAQ glossary for CRM, marketing and sales terms

Our team also discovered that HubSpot was under-represented in the problem exploration phase of the buyer’s journey. We started one FAQ glossary Covering top-of-funnel terms like “What is marketing automation?” and “How does lead scoring work?” Each page contains a concise definition, frequently asked questions, and links to HubSpot features. Response engines often rely on definitional content, and owning these terms means being part of the first response a prospect receives.

As a result, the citation share for corresponding requests increased by +60%. Brand visibility for awareness stage prompts increased by +35 percentage points when the glossary was cited.

Optimization of product pages for AEO

We’ve updated product feature pages to better align with how answer engines actually understand and retrieve content: we’ve added FAQs, rewritten headlines to address common shopper questions, and improved formatting with tables and lists. We also added structured data to make it easier for response engines to read and categorize the pages.

The result: a 56% increase in AI response engine citations and an improvement in average ranking position from 1.5 to 1.

Pillar 2: Offsite reinforcement

Our AEO benchmarks revealed third-party content-based AI responses to HubSpot’s products. We needed to expand HubSpot’s presence across the third-party ecosystem.

Using XFunnel data, our partnerships team identified publishers that had already received awards but had not yet mentioned HubSpot. We gave our partners AEO recommendations and templates so they could create answer machine-friendly content and win even more citations.

We quickly scaled the program. By the end of 2025, we had partnered with hundreds of websites around the world, created nearly a thousand new pages, and received hundreds of thousands of new AI citations – all with a mention of HubSpot.

Pillar 3: Forum growth

XFunnel benchmarks showed that Reddit was one of the most cited sources for our tracked prompts.

Using XFunnel, we integrated constant Reddit citation monitoring into our reporting, identifying high-impact subreddits and HubSpot mention gaps on a weekly basis. We then asked HubSpot community advocates to publish content that answers some of the most common buyer questions.

After XFunnel benchmarks showed that the DE and FR markets were seeing significant growth in Reddit citations but no HubSpot mentions, we launched localized campaigns. Within a month, HubSpot’s mention rate increased from 0% to 33.5% in FR and 17.1% in DE.

Reddit-driven citations increased from 178 (May 2025) to 146,000 (December 2025).

Everything in this case study started with a single question: When buyers asked AI, was HubSpot an answer? Before we could optimize anything, we needed to understand which prompts were important, where we appeared, who was quoted, and where there were gaps.

First came the measurement. The strategy followed.

This feature is now available in HubSpot. Our AEO tools give you real-time visibility into how your brand is appearing in response engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.

• Track the prompts your buyers are likely to use
• Compare your visibility with the competition
• Analyze which sources drive response engine citations

All of these insights result in prioritized recommendations – based on the successful AEO tactics our team has tested – so you know what you need to improve and can start implementing it immediately.

And when you use AEO within Marketing Hub Pro or Enterprise, you get CRM-powered instant suggestions, so your tracking is based on your business context from day one and doesn’t have to be built from scratch.