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AI-GP Protocol™

Why Traditional SEO Is Failing in 2025: The HubSpot Wake-Up Call

Updated: Nov 8

When HubSpot—the company that literally wrote the book on inbound marketing—lost 75% of its organic traffic in less than two years, the SEO world stopped in its tracks.

From 24.4 million monthly visitors in March 2023 to just 6.1 million by January 20251, HubSpot's collapse sent shockwaves through an industry that had always considered them untouchable. With a Domain Authority of 81 and over 120 million backlinks2, they had everything traditional SEO said you needed to succeed.

Yet they failed anyway.

This isn't a story about one company making mistakes. This is a story about the fundamental breakdown of a 20-year-old playbook—and why the strategies that built empires are now destroying them.

The Numbers Tell a Brutal Story

HubSpot's traffic didn't just decline gradually. Between November and December 2024 alone, they lost nearly 5 million visits—dropping from 13.5 million to 8.6 million in a single month3. By early 2025, estimates put their blog traffic at a catastrophic 81% loss year-over-year4.

But HubSpot isn't alone.

The click-through rate for the #1 position on Google dropped from 7.3% in March 2024 to just 2.6% in March 2025—a 64% decline in just one year5. That's not a fluctuation. That's a structural collapse.

Meanwhile, AI Overviews—Google's AI-generated summaries—doubled their presence from 6.49% of searches in January 2025 to 13.14% by March6. And when an AI Overview appears, even the #1 ranking sees CTR drops of 30-56%7.

SEO job listings tell the same story: down 37% year-over-year in Q1 20248. One in three marketers reported their company laying off team members in the past year9.

The data is clear: traditional SEO isn't just struggling. It's being systematically dismantled.

What Killed the Traditional Playbook

For years, the SEO formula was simple: publish more content, target more keywords, build more backlinks. Cast a wide net, capture traffic, convert customers.

HubSpot mastered this approach. They created content on everything from CRM software to resignation letter templates, from marketing automation to inspirational quotes. The strategy generated millions of visits monthly.

Until Google changed the rules.

As SEO consultant Gaetano DiNardi explained on LinkedIn:

"The game has changed. No one is safe, not even a mega brand like HubSpot. Google doesn't really want you publishing topics that are 'too far astray' just for the sake of getting traffic. Why publish these topics anyway? Extreme top of funnel is not worth it."10

The shift centers on topical authority—Google's new obsession with rewarding deep expertise in specific areas rather than broad coverage of everything. HubSpot's blog about "real estate license requirements" or "famous quotes about teamwork" might have driven traffic, but they signaled to Google that the site lacked focused expertise.

Taylor Berg, a marketing strategist, put it bluntly:

"Our largest competitor was focusing so hard on traffic that they couldn't even rank for [their core keywords]. And they still don't. It's all because they have a 'traffic at all costs' keyword strategy. The HubSpot SEO decline is a great example of hitting critical mass of content relevance."11

The Three Forces Destroying Traditional SEO

1. AI Overviews Are the New Gatekeepers

When someone searches "how to write a meta description," they no longer need to click on HubSpot's comprehensive 3,000-word guide. Google's AI Overview provides the answer instantly—at the top of the page, before any organic results appear.

The result? Users get their answer without ever leaving Google. Websites get visibility without traffic. Rankings without revenue.

Educational platform Chegg disclosed a 49% decline in non-subscriber traffic between January 2024 and January 2025, coinciding directly with AI Overviews answering homework questions that previously drove traffic to their site12.

The math is brutal: even if you rank #1, you're competing with an AI-generated answer that sits above you and satisfies user intent before they ever see your link.

2. Zero-Click Searches Are the New Normal

58.5% of all Google searches in the United States now end without any click to a website13. More than half of all searches—answered entirely within Google's ecosystem through AI Overviews, featured snippets, knowledge panels, and instant answers.

For businesses that built their growth on organic traffic, this represents an existential crisis. You can have perfect SEO, rank #1 for your target keywords, and still watch your traffic evaporate because users simply don't need to click anymore.

As Joe Procopio, founder of JoeProcopio.com, wrote in Inc. Magazine:

"It's ironic that Google itself hammered the last nail into the coffin for SEO. But it's not a mistake. Or a surprise... About six months ago, I started publicly warning folks that SEO was dying. I got scolded by SEO gurus. Two days ago at Google I/O, the world's largest search engine announced that it was mass launching updates built on its AI summarized search results. Dots connected. Coffin nailed shut. SEO is dead."14

3. User Behavior Fundamentally Changed

People aren't just searching differently—they're searching elsewhere.

34% of Gen Z users now use AI chatbots as their primary search method15, favoring ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude over Google for many queries. They don't "search" in the traditional sense—they converse with AI systems that provide synthesized answers without ever showing them a list of links.

YouTube serves as the second-largest search engine globally. TikTok has become a discovery platform for Gen Z. Reddit discussions rank higher than brand websites for many product queries.

Google's market share dipped below 90% for the first time since 2015 in late 202416, averaging 89.6% over three months. It's still dominant, but the erosion has begun—and it's accelerating.

Why Your Current Strategy Is Failing

If you're still optimizing for traditional SEO in 2025, you're optimizing for a game that no longer exists. Here's what's broken:

Keywords Don't Matter the Way They Used To. Google now understands context, intent, and semantic relationships. Stuffing keywords or even strategically placing them won't save you if your content lacks genuine expertise and value.

Backlinks Alone Won't Save You. HubSpot had 120 million backlinks. It didn't prevent their traffic collapse. Google's algorithms now penalize sites that lack topical authority, regardless of their backlink profile.

More Content Isn't Better. HubSpot published thousands of articles across countless topics. That breadth killed them. Google now rewards depth and expertise in focused areas, not quantity of content across everything.

Rankings Don't Equal Traffic. You can rank #1 and still lose 50-70% of your clicks to AI Overviews. The position matters less when the AI answer appears above it.

Traffic Doesn't Equal Business Results. Even if you maintain traffic, zero-click behavior means users consume your content without ever entering your funnel. Visibility without conversion opportunity.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Traditional SEO optimized for an ecosystem where Google sent you traffic in exchange for good content.

That ecosystem no longer exists.

Google is now an answer engine, not a referring engine. It keeps users inside its platform, providing AI-synthesized responses drawn from multiple sources—including your content—without requiring users to visit you.

You can create the best content, rank perfectly, and still become invisible in the new paradigm.

As Sergei Rogulin, Head of SEO at Semrush, observed:

"Search traffic will decline, but Google and other LLMs will still need human content. AI needs to be trained on new content."17

Your content still matters—but not in the way you think. You're no longer creating content to attract visitors. You're creating content to train AI systems that will replace those visitors.

What Comes Next

This doesn't mean SEO is entirely dead. 53.3% of all website traffic still comes from organic search18, and Google still processes over 8.5 billion searches per day19.

But the ROI equation has fundamentally changed.

The brands that will succeed in this new environment aren't the ones clinging to traditional tactics. They're the ones recognizing that search has evolved from finding websites to finding answers—and that being the source behind the answer requires a completely different strategy.

The shift isn't from SEO to something new. It's from Search Engine Optimization to Answer Engine Optimization.

And that requires more than just updating your keyword strategy. It requires rethinking everything you know about digital visibility.


About the Author

Dorota Burzec is a systems strategist and researcher of new content visibility models in the digital space. She is the creator of AI-GP Protocol, a methodology for designing and positioning content for the AI Search layer and citations by LLM models (ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini).

For over 15 years, she has worked in strategic consulting, investment funds, and scaling technology companies. She co-created projects for Forbes-listed entrepreneurs and international organizations, combining analytics, information architecture, and narrative-based marketing.

Today, she focuses on building visibility systems for brands and teams that want to exist in the new layer of the internet—the one where AI decides which content is read, cited, and recommended to users.


Footnotes

  1. Alphametic (February 2025). "Unpacking HubSpot's SEO Crash: Blog Traffic Drop and AI Overviews." https://alphametic.com/hubspots-seo-crash-ai-overviews ↩

  2. Alphametic (February 2025). "Unpacking HubSpot's SEO Crash: Blog Traffic Drop and AI Overviews." https://alphametic.com/hubspots-seo-crash-ai-overviews ↩

  3. Intelligency Group (January 2025). "Hubspot Major Traffic Decline." https://www.intelligencygroup.com/blog/hubspot-major-traffic-decline/ ↩

  4. Surfer SEO (April 2025). "A Deep Dive into the Controversies and Misconceptions Surrounding HubSpot's Organic Traffic Decline." https://surferseo.com/blog/hubspot-traffic-drop/ ↩

  5. Search Atlas (October 2025). "300+ SEO Statistics and Facts in 2025." https://searchatlas.com/blog/seo-statistics/ ↩

  6. HT&T Consulting (August 2025). "Google and AI Overview: The collapse of organic traffic." https://www.htt.it/en/google-and-ai-overview-the-collapse-of-organic-traffic/ ↩

  7. Search Engine Land (May 2025). "Shocking 56% CTR drop: Google AI Overviews gut MailOnline's traffic." https://searchengineland.com/google-ai-overviews-mail-online-ctr-drop-455393 ↩

  8. Semrush (January 2025). "Is SEO Dead in 2025? No, But Changes Are Coming." https://www.semrush.com/blog/is-seo-dead/ ↩

  9. Semrush (January 2025). "Is SEO Dead in 2025? No, But Changes Are Coming." https://www.semrush.com/blog/is-seo-dead/ ↩

  10. Search Engine Land (January 2025). "HubSpot's SEO collapse: What went wrong and why?" https://searchengineland.com/hubspot-seo-organic-traffic-drop-451096 ↩

  11. Search Engine Land (January 2025). "HubSpot's SEO collapse: What went wrong and why?" https://searchengineland.com/hubspot-seo-organic-traffic-drop-451096 ↩

  12. Search Engine Journal (October 2025). "Google AI Overviews Impact On Publishers & How To Adapt Into 2026." https://www.searchenginejournal.com/impact-of-ai-overviews-how-publishers-need-to-adapt/556843/ ↩

  13. Break The Web (September 2025). "AI SEO Statistics: How AI & LLMs Are Reshaping Search." https://breaktheweb.agency/seo/ai-seo-statistics/ ↩

  14. Inc. Magazine (May 2025). "SEO Is Dead, According to Google." https://www.inc.com/joe-procopio/seo-is-dead-according-to-google/91193051 ↩

  15. Search Engine Land (July 2025). "Google still leads, but Gen Z and AI are reshaping search behavior: Survey." https://searchengineland.com/google-leads-gen-z-ai-search-behavior-survey-459809 ↩

  16. Design Rush (May 2025). "Top 30 SEO Statistics 2025: Key Trends and Insights." https://www.designrush.com/agency/search-engine-optimization/trends/seo-statistics ↩

  17. Semrush (January 2025). "Is SEO Dead in 2025? No, But Changes Are Coming." https://www.semrush.com/blog/is-seo-dead/ ↩

  18. Timmermann Group (August 2025). "Is SEO Dead? The Truth About Search Engine Optimization in 2025." https://www.wearetg.com/blog/is-seo-dead/ ↩

  19. Link Assistant (May 2025). "Top SEO Statistics for 2025." https://www.link-assistant.com/news/seo-statistics.html ↩


 
 
 

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