Adobe has bought SEMrush for $1.9 billion. This is one of the biggest changes in marketing, analytics, LLM SEO, and business intelligence in a long time. This action strengthens Adobe’s role in storing, organizing, and analyzing data. This is important as brands work harder to stay visible in a world influenced by AI search.
Adobe controls a significant portion of the creative and analytics market. This is thanks to Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud. Semrush controls a major share of SEO, keyword research, and competitive-intelligence tools.
Merging these two companies will change how marketers, agencies, and businesses use search data. This is important as the industry shifts from traditional SEO to systems that use large language models. This includes web search automation, AI website tools, and image generation systems. All these rely on real-time data from platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.
Why Did Adobe Buy Semrush?
Adobe has watched search data become more important over the past few years. Organic search drives a huge amount of traffic to websites, but Adobe never had a built-in SEO solution. Semrush gives Adobe a complete platform with keyword data, ranking insights, domain analytics, and deep data tools.
Adobe chose to buy a leading company instead of making something new from a data model. The deal also boosts Adobe’s position against HubSpot, Salesforce, and Google.
This is important as more platforms use structured knowledge. They use it to support coding assistants, search insights, AI search, and content workflows. This sets Adobe up to become a major website optimizer across content, UX, and data-driven decisions.
What Does Semrush Gain From the Deal?
Semrush benefits in several major ways. The biggest advantage is access to Adobe’s resources.
Adobe has more engineers and more AI tools. It also has a better way to organize data. This includes both structured and unstructured data in a standard format.
This improves Semrush’s ability to create new features. These features depend on labeled datasets and better meta descriptions. They also use signals that help both SEO and AI-driven recommendation systems. ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity use these systems.
Semrush will also gain exposure to enterprise-level clients. Adobe is a leader in this field. They can better integrate Semrush into tasks. These tasks include working with creative assets, building websites, creating analytics dashboards, and classifying data across campaigns.
Semrush has always been good at SEO. This change helps it connect with creative teams, analytics teams, and content teams that use Adobe tools.
With better integrations, Semrush can fit into daily workflows. This means it won’t just be a separate tool. This helps companies keep strong visibility in both traditional search engines and AI search models.
Semrush stands to gain:
- Access to Adobe’s enterprise customer base
- Better integrations with Adobe Analytics and Adobe Express
- Stronger AI support for generating content and insights
- More stability and long-term financial growth
- A wider platform for experiments in business intelligence and cross-channel insights
What Should Users Expect from the SEMrush Acquisition?
Right now, users will not see immediate changes. Adobe normally keeps new acquisitions running independently for a while.
Semrush will keep its brand early on, but changes will appear gradually. Pricing may change, and features may be added to Adobe bundles.
More AI tools may use Semrush’s strengths in structured data. This is especially true as both platforms connect datasets in Adobe Experience Cloud. They aim to support LLM SEO and AI website strategies.
Users should also expect tighter integration between Semrush and Adobe tools. This may include:
- Keyword suggestions inside Adobe Express
- Ranking data flowing into Adobe Analytics
- Content insights tied to business intelligence dashboards
- Smarter meta descriptions generated using Adobe’s AI models
- Stronger cross-channel reporting, including social media and search data
How Does the Sale of SEMrush Affect the SEO Team?
SEO teams rely on tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, Google Search Console, and Screaming Frog to track performance. Adobe’s purchase will push many companies to reorganize their tool stacks. If they already use Adobe Analytics, merging that with SEMrush’s benefits of structured data may simplify reporting.
This could also shift how SEO teams look at traditional SEO workflows. Adobe may introduce dashboards that link ranking changes, content performance, engagement metrics, and campaign results in one system.
With more unified datasets, teams can use the same rows and columns. This reduces differences between tools. It also helps brands stay visible in search engines and AI search results.
Expected impacts include:
- More pressure to consolidate tools
- New workflows connecting SEO to analytics and content creation
- More accurate reporting using Adobe’s larger combined dataset
- If Adobe focuses elsewhere, updates may come more slowly.
- Stronger enterprise features that benefit large teams
How does the Semrush Acquisition Affect Agencies?
Agencies rely heavily on Semrush for audits, keyword research, meta descriptions, and competitive insights. This acquisition may streamline workflows for agencies already using Adobe. They will build stronger links between insights, asset creation, and reporting. This will happen across website platforms, content systems, and AI tools.
However, pricing changes could hurt smaller agencies. Adobe often targets enterprise clients, and Semrush may eventually align with that structure.
Agencies may also face new learning curves as integrations expand. Adobe systems can be complex. Adding SEO, analytics, AI workflows, and website optimizer tools into one system may need retraining for entire teams.
How This Changes the SEO Industry
This deal signals a major shift: search data is becoming core infrastructure for AI. Companies want control over the datasets used to train predictive insights, ranking estimators, rewriting tools, and coding assistants.
With Semrush, Adobe now controls a massive layer of keyword, competitor, and intent data. That data, combined with Adobe’s existing stack, helps them build:
- Better AI suggestions
- Automated content workflows
- Unified business intelligence reporting
- Stronger cross-channel visibility
This change will affect the tools used by ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. All these tools need clear and organized signals to answer questions and rank content in AI search layers.
This may also cause more mergers. Shopify, Wix, and HubSpot may look for their own SEO tools. Smaller platforms may partner with larger companies to survive.
Industry-wide changes may include:
- More consolidation as firms buy SEO platforms
- Increased value of structured data for AI
- Stronger use of large language models in keyword research
- More all-in-one marketing ecosystems
- Fiercer competition between Adobe, HubSpot, Salesforce, and Google
What Happens Next
Users should watch for updates from both companies. The next year will show how the platforms work together. It will also show how data warehouses change under Adobe. Marketers must adjust to a new environment. In this world, LLM SEO, AI search, and AI website visibility are important. These elements are essential for staying competitive.
Mark Pysher is an internet professional with 30 years of experience. As an SEO specialist skilled at boosting search rankings through strategic optimization, he blends technical expertise and creative strategies to elevate brands online. Mark lives in the Portland, Maine area and enjoys time with his family, traveling, hiking, and pickleball.
