A category-defining platform
Zapier is used by millions of people and teams at companies of every size to connect thousands of apps and automate the work that slows them down. As the company moves upmarket into enterprise and AI-native workflows, its positioning increasingly centers on AI orchestration, helping businesses connect, automate, and intelligently act across their entire tool stack.
The signal that changed everything
In Q2 2025, Zapier's acquisition data started showing a pattern that traditional attribution couldn't explain. Brand traffic was spiking across organic, paid, and direct channels, yet what was actually driving that lift remained a question.
When the data team ran a causal impact analysis, they found the answer: roughly one in four signups was being influenced by LLM recommendations. People were researching in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude before arriving at Zapier ready to convert.
The channel was real. But Zapier was flying blind inside it.
"We had zero visibility into what these LLMs were saying about Zapier," said Carolina Velasco, Growth Analytics Manager at Zapier, who leads the initiative.
How the industry leader chose their partner
Zapier evaluated multiple platforms in Q2 2025, when the AI search tooling landscape was still nascent. Some vendors offered to custom-build solutions, which initially sounded appealing but raised a practical concern: could they scale at the speed Zapier needed?
"It came down to Profound being the most established partner," Carolina said.
They needed a platform robust enough to translate strategy into trackable data, and flexible enough to let them operationalize it their way.
Standing up an AEO program
Zapier didn't ease into this. They assembled a cross-functional team spanning content, SEO, PR, YouTube, Reddit, and review sites, and onboarded Profound as they defined three strategic priorities from day one:
- Enterprise positioning. As Zapier moves upmarket, they need LLMs to accurately represent their enterprise features: security, governance, customization. Not just "Zapier connects your apps."
- Use case visibility. When someone asks an LLM "how can I send leads from my CRM to my sales team," Zapier needs to show up as an answer.
- Competitor conversations. When users ask about Zapier alternatives or run head-to-head comparisons, Zapier wanted an owned voice in those results instead of ceding the conversation to third-party listicles and Reddit threads.
The strategy was clear. The question was how to measure it and know if any of it was working. That's where Profound came in.
How Zapier uses Profound
Zapier's implementation is notably technical. They didn't just log into a dashboard. They connected Profound's API to Looker and built a suite of internal dashboards so every team touching AEO could self-serve analysis.
Prompt tracking tied to strategy. Each of Zapier's three priorities maps directly to prompt groups in Profound. For enterprise positioning, that means tracking prompts like "best enterprise automation platforms" and "AI orchestration for large companies." For competitor content, it means monitoring citation share on alternatives and comparison queries. And, now, the team adds new prompts with every initiative they launch.
Citation intelligence driving PR. Profound's citation data showed Zapier which publications and sources LLMs actually pull from for the prompts they care about. The team exported that list and handed it to their PR agency as a target list, spanning tier-one media down to independent grassroots publications.
Citation tagging for cross-team measurement. Zapier tags every outlet their PR team reaches out to as "earned media," then tracks that grouping's citation share over time. Their PR agency can log in and self-serve their own performance tracking.
YouTube topic identification. Profound's data showed that YouTube videos get picked up and cited by Google and Gemini far faster than sources like Reddit. Using their visibility and citation data in the platform, they identify high-potential video topics likely to influence LLMs, turning that insight into a systematic content advantage, helping enable Zapier to publish roughly five videos per day.
Query fan-out analysis. Beyond tracking final citations, Zapier monitors the intermediate queries that LLMs run to construct their answers. This has surfaced new content opportunities the team wouldn't have found through traditional keyword research alone.
The results
Owning the competitor conversation
Before launching their AEO program, Profound's citation tracking revealed that Zapier’s content was virtually absent from competitor queries. When users asked about "best Zapier alternatives" or ran vendor comparisons, the cited sources were niche publications, listicles, Reddit threads, and review sites. Zapier had no voice in those conversations.
The team launched more than 20 competitor-focused pages quickly, covering top competitors with updated positioning, use case breakdowns, pricing comparisons, and feature-by-feature analysis.
The result: Zapier is now the top cited domain for competitor-related prompts, a 4x increase since launching the initiative.
40% of homepage visitors attribute discovery to LLMs
Zapier runs a "how did you hear about us" survey on their homepage. 40% of surveyed visitors say they found Zapier through ChatGPT or other LLMs.
3x higher quality traffic
Visitors who arrive through LLM-influenced paths are significantly more qualified than those from traditional organic search. Their free trial signup rate is roughly 3x higher than Google Organic visitors, reflecting that these users have already done their research and arrive ready to act.
One in four signups influenced by LLMs
Through causal analysis comparing their acquisition funnel before and after AI search became a channel, Zapier estimates that 25% of signups are now influenced by LLM recommendations, validating AI search as a standalone channel rather than a footnote to SEO.
What's next
Zapier is doubling down on sentiment analysis and beginning to explore how AI search influences their enterprise pipeline and sales motion, not just the self-serve product-led side of the business.
The broader signal is clear. When Zapier started this work a year ago, LLM-influenced discovery was an unexplained blip in their attribution data. Today it's a primary channel with its own cross-functional team, its own measurement stack, and results that are reshaping how the company thinks about growth.
