SEO and AI visibility for SaaS & software.

No segment has shifted the provider search as quickly as software. The shortlist is created in an AI response before anyone opens your website or speaks to sales. And the crucial question is rarely “which tool is the best”, but rather “what is the alternative to X” - answered by comparison portals that do not belong to you.

Whether B2B platform, vertical software, developer tool or marketplace: The leverage lies in docking into the category in which your market is actually looking, answering the question of alternatives yourself and disclosing the details on which the decision depends.

No segment has shifted the provider search as quickly as software. According to HubSpot State of AI (2025), 52% of provider searches in SaaS and tech are already done via AI assistants - the highest value of all industries surveyed, well ahead of health (41%) and finance (38%). The review begins before the first visit to the website and often before the first contact with sales.

The initial value is also the best we measure: 28 out of 100 in the industry benchmark for SaaS and tech. That's above average and still low - the top group is 80+. In hardly any other industry is the gap between average and top so large, which means that visibility is a real competitive advantage and not a hygiene factor.

The crucial question is rarely “which tool is the best”, but rather “what is the alternative to X”. Today, comparison portals, listicles and forums answer this question - i.e. sources that do not belong to you. If you don't build your own alternatives and comparison page yourself, you leave the classification of your own product to the competition and any third parties.

There is also a category problem. Many SaaS providers describe themselves in a self-invented category that no one is looking for. A system can only recommend a product where it is classified: Anyone who positions themselves as a “workflow intelligence platform” but competes against project management tools will not be present in the actual search query. Your own language must match the language of the buyers before you can change it.

The third lever is structure. Google AI Mode breaks down a query into eight to twelve sub-questions and only has around 12% overlap with the classic Google top 10. For software, this means: pricing model, integrations, data protection, migration, limits and support are not second-order sub-pages, but exactly the sub-questions that are asked in the expanded AI search.

And finally, it's who talks about you that counts. AI systems give much greater weight to independent sources than self-representation. Review platforms, specialist media, integration directories of the platforms you are based on and contributions from your customers are the part that no landing page, no matter how good it is, can replace - and the part that takes the longest.