Client case study: Propelius
48 of 56 new posts in AI search indexes, and 51 of 100 target queries in Google's top 20.
Propelius builds MVPs, SaaS products and AI agents for founders. Its buyers were asking AI assistants for advice, and Propelius wasn't in the answers. Salient researched the questions, published 56 posts and got them read by AI.
of the new posts made it into AI search indexes, 48 of 56, within ten weeks.
01Before and after
Invisible to AI. ChatGPT and Claude recommended Propelius in 0 of 47 tracked buyer answers, and 93% of its Search Console clicks came from people who already knew the name.
Buyers asked AI for advice. Propelius wasn't in the answers.
AI crawlers are now 31% of all crawler traffic to the feed.
02What we did
Three phases in ten weeks, each one ending in a number. Propelius approved every topic.
236 buyer questions scored on relevance, intent, volume and difficulty, 197 kept across 10 clusters. 12 competitors mapped. 100 topics approved.
About 187,000 words, 190 cited sources and 110 internal links, on propelius.tech/feeds.
ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude crawlers read the posts. Every live post was refreshed once.
03AI pickup
All three big assistants came. PerplexityBot made the most visits, and OpenAI's two crawlers together made 40%.
posts are read only by AI assistants, never by Googlebot or Bingbot. That reach would not appear in any Google report, which is why we track AI crawlers separately.
04The finding that changed the plan
Many real buyer questions are too long or specific to show search volume. Of 23 questions already drawing impressions in Propelius's Search Console, 19 showed zero search volume in Ahrefs.
Scroll sideways to see the whole table.
| Buyer question | Search Console result |
|---|---|
| Which React or Node frameworks suit a pre-seed SaaS team (a 25-word question) | Position 3.1 |
| How AI agents reduce operational costs in SaaS | 155 impressions, position 7.5 |
| Agencies that deliver a production-ready SaaS MVP in 90 days | Position 8.8 |
Nine of the 23 were already in Google's top ten. So instead of new articles, five topics became refreshes of pages that already rank, and four more target questions the site already ranks for. A volume-first plan would have thrown these away.
05How this was measured
Every figure, its source and its window.
Scroll sideways to see the whole table.
| Figure | Source | Window | Strength |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5,630 AI-crawler visits | Server logs on propelius.tech/feeds, by user agent | 1 Jul to 28 Sep 2026 | Measured |
| 48 of 56 posts in AI indexes, 34 opened mid-answer | Same server logs | 28 Jul to 28 Sep 2026 | Measured |
| 51 of 100 queries in Google's top 20 | Salient program tracking | As of 28 Sep 2026 | Tracked |
| 56 posts, 187,000 words, 190 sources | CMS publish log | 22 Jul to 26 Aug 2026 | Measured |
| 197 buyer queries finalised | Approval sheets signed off by Propelius | 9 to 21 Jul 2026 | Signed off |
The honest limit. A crawler visit shows an AI assistant read a page, not that it cited it. That is why we report the 34 posts opened live mid-answer separately.
06Questions
In ten weeks, Salient researched 236 buyer questions and kept 197 across 10 clusters, published 56 long-form posts on propelius.tech/feeds with 190 cited sources, and refreshed every live post once. Propelius approved every topic.
5,630 requests from PerplexityBot, Claude-User, OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User between 1 July and 28 September 2026, up from zero the quarter before. They were counted in Propelius's own server logs.
Not always. A crawler visit shows an AI assistant read a page, not that it cited it. 34 of the 56 posts were opened live by an assistant while it was answering a user.
21 of the 56 posts were fetched by AI crawlers but never by Googlebot or Bingbot. For those posts, AI assistants are the only engines reading them, and that reach would not show in any Google report.
51 of the 100 target queries ranked in Google's top 20 as of 28 September 2026, according to Salient's program tracking.
A product engineering studio that builds MVPs, SaaS products and AI agents for founders on a fixed price: a 30-day proof of concept, then a 90-day full build. Its buyers are founders and CTOs at 10 to 500 person companies.
In 30 minutes we show you which buyer questions AI answers without you, and the first posts we'd publish.
No credit card, no sales script. Thirty minutes with the pod that would run it.
Salient by GrowthSpree
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