Google Ventures Backs Another Marketing Company, Hubspot

Mar 8, 2011 at 7:32pm ET by Pamela Parker

Hubspot, a software company that makes tools for online marketing, has garnered a $32 million series D funding round from Google Ventures, along with Sequoia Capital and Salesforce.com. The firm’s original investors also participated in the round.

Hubspot, founded in 2006 by two MIT alums, offers businesses a suite of software to help them attract more visitors to their web sites and convert those visitors into leads and customers. The tools do everything from help optimize landing pages, to blog, to manage e-mail campaigns, to lead tracking. The company also offers search engine optimization tools to analyze pages; surface and track keywords; and analyze incoming links. It boasts more than 4,000 customers.

Google investing in third-party SEO and SEM tools is interesting but not particularly unusual. The company’s venture arm, established in 2007, was involved in a $5.75 million investment in Trada, a “crowdsourced SEM marketplace,” in June of 2010. It also has a stake in VigLink, an affiliate marketing technology company.

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: General

About The Author: Pamela Parker is a contributing editor for Search Engine Land and Executive Features Editor at Marketing Land. She’s a well-respected authority on digital marketing, having reported and written on the subject since 1998, including a stint as managing editor of ClickZ. She’s also worked to help monetize independent publishers’ sites at Federated Media Publishing. She blogs about media and marketing at The River and about cooking, gardening and parenthood at Free Range. She can be found on Twitter as @pamelaparker. See more articles by Pamela Parker

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http://www.highrankings.com/seoservicestwitter Jill Whalen

Since Hubspot is primarily an SEO tool, isn’t Google investing in them a bit of a conflict of interest?
http://www.mikevolpe.com/marketing-speaker/ Mike Volpe

I think calling HubSpot “primarily an SEO tool” is like calling the iPhone “primarily a phone”. I actually think the iPhone is primarily a computer, just like HubSpot is primarily a marketing platform. HubSpot includes lead management, forms and landing pages, blogging, content management, social media marketing, email marketing, lead nurturing, visitor / lead / customer analytics, and more. It is an all-in-one marketing software system.

But yes, in some way, Google just invested in a software system that includes some SEO (all white hat, no scraping or sketchy stuff). They also own Blogger and Google Sites though, plus Webmaster tools has some SEO stuff, I don’t see how this is different from anything like that. We just have a broader and more complete marketing system than those individual tools.

Disclosure: I work at HubSpot.
http://www.mikevolpe.com/marketing-speaker/ Mike Volpe

PS – Hi Jill! Its been a long time! Let me know the next time you are in Cambridge!
ymarketing_Digital_Agency

Great work! We are glad that HubSpot has been recognized as a true leader in providing a level playing field within the SMB space. The big companies have noticed and done the right thing in supporting you guys! We are proud to be a HubSpot partner.