Adobe Inc. revealed today that it plans to acquire digital marketing and search engine optimization company Semrush Holdings Inc. for $1.9 billion in an all-cash transaction.

Founded in 2008, Semrush provides digital marketing and search engine optimization tools for businesses and agencies. The company’s platform is used for keyword research, competitive analysis, site audits, backlink tracking, domain authority tracking and online visibility insights.

The platform allows marketers to identify which keywords their competitors are ranking for, examine backlinks pointing to their sites and scan for website health issues such as broken links, slow pages, or missing tags that affect SEO rankings.

Using the platform, marketers can make informed decisions about content strategy, paid-search campaigns and technical SEO improvements. The platform does so by aggregating and visualizing large amounts of SEO-related data such as search volume, cost-per-click and keyword difficulty.

Semrush also offers more advanced features for agencies and larger enterprises, including custom reporting dashboards, team collaboration tools, market research modules and cross-channel analytics that span organic search, paid search, social media and display advertising.

Though best known for its SEO services, Semrush has more recently introduced products to help brands monitor how they appear not just in search engine results but within the responses of large language model platforms and chatbots.

The shift toward LLMs for information gathering, such as ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, and the need to optimize content in what is being called “generative engine optimization,” or GEO, is one of the reasons Adobe cites for the acquisition.

“Bringing its GEO capabilities and more than ten years of SEO expertise, Semrush helps brands enhance their brand visibility and expand audience reach,” Adobe wrote in its acquisition announcement. “Semrush’s solutions address a growing, essential need for marketers: remaining discoverable in AI search.”

Adobe says that with Semrush’s technology, it will be able to deliver a comprehensive solution that gives marketers a holistic understanding of how their brands appear across owned channels, LLMs, traditional search and the wider web.

“Brand visibility is being reshaped by generative AI and brands that don’t embrace this new opportunity risk losing relevance and revenue,” said Anil Chakravarthy, president of Adobe’s Digital Experience Business. “With Semrush, we’re unlocking GEO for marketers as a new growth channel alongside their SEO, driving more visibility, customer engagement and conversions across the ecosystem.”

Coming into its acquisition, Semrush had raised a single round of $40 million in April 2018, according to data from Tracxn. Investors in the company included Greycroft Partners, Headline Management Co. and Siguler Guff & Co. LP.

Subject to customary closing conditions, the acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2026.

Photo: Semrush