On Wednesday, November 19, Adobe announced striking a definitive agreement to acquire Semrush, the SEO, GEO and brand visibility platform, in an all-cash deal valued at approximately $1.9 billion, or $12 per share.
This move represents Adobe’s boldest push yet to deepen its footprint in AI-powered marketing, bringing Semrush’s data-rich visibility tools to Adobe’s enterprise marketing stack.
Icoverage report | Nov 20, 2025
I wanted to get the report upfront so anyone can get the gist before I simply go off laying out numbers and numbers, all to prove the point: AI is the new interface.
Artificial intelligence, we've all come to know it, some of us hate it, some love it, some don't really care and others are scared of it.
This is a technology that will come to affect us all. It is going to start off with businesses. In fact, I have a draft on PEAKD right now that I haven't been able to come around to publish titled "The AI abundance will start with businesses in non-sensitive industries."
Maybe I'll eventually be able to complete and publish it, but right now, I don't have enough data to argue my points in that front, the way I'll want it, so I'm stuck with knowing that the AI abundance will trend as the title suggests, but:
Semrush crawls 10B URLS daily and tracks over 43 trillion backlinks. You can find more impressive stats on their website, but I think this two gives anyone a picture of what Semrush is to businesses.
If you're a regular internet user, you've probably never used Semrush, possibly never even heard of it, but if you've tried your hands on building a digital business that includes launching a website that requires search engine optimization (SEO) to scale and acquire users or customers, then it's very likely that you've not only heard of Semrush, but also have an account.
Google search is where people go to find information on most things. It's been the number destination for quite some time now.
Semrush is where businesses go to gain understanding of not just their own data, but broader data on the market they are playing in, a tool that helps them interpret their market ecosystems, essentially.
What are your customers searching for?
Which of your competitors currently solve this problem?
If none, how can you capitalize on this problem-turned-opportunity?
If there are options, how can you beat your competitors offerings or solutions?
These are the questions businesses take to Semrush in hopes of finding answers.
It's hard to argue against their value to millions of businesses, within the marketing community, Semrush is considered to have no real competition as their solutions stand out.
Now that SEO is potentially dead, or transitioning to generative engine optimization (GEO), the value proposition of Semrush grows significantly.
How can that be so if Generative AI is replace Search?
That's the misunderstanding. GenAI is not going to kill search, it will simply improve it. Yes, most internet traffic will be AI agents (bots) handling user queries but there will still exist a search layer.
The reason Semrush’s appeal increases is because generative AI increases data generation and more data from end users, means that Semrush gains new insights into users and consumer needs and behaviors, that are valuable to the businesses they serve.
Google itself noted that AI has led to users making more search queries. Understanding that almost anything you ask will be answered has made Search significantly more valuable to users and companies like Semrush that can track and interpret this data will be very valuable to businesses.
There's growing concerns from users, however, that Adobe may hike prices for Semrush’s products when it gets bundled into its marketing stack. The way I see it, this could very much happen, which would mean that businesses may see costs increase on that front.
It would truly be interesting if the "information layer" somehow grew more expensive for businesses while everything else: marketing, management, security, etc, became significantly cheaper.
This acquisition is just one of many indicators to come to show that GenAI will be leading interfaces or pathways to the internet and businesses will need to learn quickly how to adjust to that.
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@malopie, I'm refunding 0.018 HIVE and 0.001 HBD, because there are no comments to reward.