If you felt a disturbance in the SEO force recently, you were not imagining it. Adobe, the software giant behind everything from PDFs to giant Photoshop files, announced its intention to acquire Semrush in a 1.9 billion dollar all-cash deal, according to Adobe’s newsroom. Marketers everywhere collectively paused mid-keyword research and said, “Wait, Adobe is buying Semrush? Is that even legal?”
Well, yes. Regulators still have to approve it, but, probably. But it is also a sign of something bigger. A shift in how brands are discovered, how marketers measure success, and how search itself is evolving because of AI.
This article breaks down what is actually happening, why Adobe wants Semrush, how it affects Adobe’s expanding empire (Adobe, I mean, Adobe?!), and what it means for you and the future of digital marketing.
What We Know So Far
On November 19th, Adobe announced its plan to acquire Semrush for roughly 12 dollars per share according to The Verge. That represents about a 77 percent premium over Semrush’s November 18th closing price. Semrush’s stock immediately rocketed because that is what happens when a software giant shows up with a suitcase full of cash.
The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2026, pending regulatory approvals and a shareholder vote. Semrush’s founders and key shareholders, representing over 75 percent of voting power, already agreed to support the deal according to Reuters. That makes the vote largely a formality.
If approved, Semrush will join Adobe’s Digital Experience segment and become part of Adobe Experience Cloud.
This is not a random acquisition. It is a strategic move.
Why Did Adobe Buy Semrush?
The short answer is visibility, data, and the future of search.
The longer answer is that Adobe wants to own the full customer journey. It’s not surprising to see more big companies work hard to get people and businesses into their exclusive networks. That’s where the money is.
In 2025, that journey often doesn’t begin on a homepage or even a Google search. It begins with AI. People are asking questions through AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Alexa. They rely on agentic systems to make decisions for them. Agentic AI is in it’s infancy, and as that grows, legal marketing will shift into another phase of online credibility.
Adobe has been positioning itself as a customer experience powerhouse, but it did not have a dedicated search visibility intelligence platform. Especially one tuned for how AI affects discovery.
Semrush gives Adobe competitive search intelligence, backlink and authority data, keyword research capabilities, SERP insights, and developing tools for generative engine optimization. Adobe explains this vision directly in its announcement. Adobe specifically wants Semrush to help brands understand how they appear across search engines and AI-generated surfaces.
Which brings us to the next part.
An Adaptation to AI and Agentic Search
Adobe cited that traffic from generative AI surfaces to retail websites has increased more than 1200 percent year over year according to the Adobe press release. Consumers are no longer typing long-tail queries. They are asking AI assistants for recommendations.
Instead of “best running shoes for flat feet,” people are saying:
“Pick a shoe I can run a 5K in this weekend. Make sure it does not destroy my arches. Also, size 11.”
This is agentic AI. Search is becoming automated decision assistance. Search is becoming part of your everyday discussions. Your AI assistant is here, you just have to learn to use it gradually over time.
The GEO debate
Now let us address GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization. The term is controversial, especially if you peruse the writing and SEO communities on LinkedIn. Some marketers argue that GEO is a distinct discipline. Others say calling GEO new is like calling a hot dog a taco. You can try, but you are going to upset people.
Here is the real answer. AI-generated answers are becoming part of the discovery funnel. Whether it is a brand recommendation, a product summary, or your competitor being name-dropped by an LLM, AI placements matter.
Semrush has been building tools to measure that. Adobe wants it. And this acquisition means:
- GEO and SEO intelligence in one place (I still argue they’re very similar)
- Adobe reporting backed by Semrush visibility data
- Unified tracking across search engines and AI answer surfaces
The future of visibility is not just SERPs. It is SERPs, feeds, AI assistants, and background recommendation systems. It’s your social media presence and your video presence. SEO is everything is what we used to say, and we mean it. On and offline marketing efforts are all SEO in their own way.
What This Means for Digital Marketers
SEO, content marketing, PPC, and social teams are all feeling pressure to adapt to AI-driven discovery. Adobe buying Semrush reshapes how visibility is measured and how people think about search. I wouldn’t even be surprised if we see some more acquisitions coming in the SEO space, but we’ll see.
This is what it means for your day-to-day work.
1. SEO and GEO will start to merge, whether I like the term or not
Teams will not maintain two separate mindsets forever. It is far more likely that:
- SEO becomes structured optimization for search engines
- GEO becomes optimization for AI answer models
Together, they will form a broader idea of visibility optimization. I hope we just call it something like “Intent Optimization” to blend the two. Adobe buying Semrush is the first major step toward that unified visibility stack.
2. New KPIs are coming for your screens
Get ready for metrics like:
- Share of AI answers
- LLM recommendation visibility
- Assistant-driven conversion paths
- Multi-surface visibility scores
- “Where does my brand appear when someone talks to ChatGPT? CoPilot?”
Adobe already owns analytics, personalization, audience data, creative tools, and journey orchestration. Adding Semrush lets them extend measurement to AI-generated surfaces, too.
3. Pricing, bundles, and lock-in are coming
This acquisition will absolutely bring:
- New Adobe bundles
- Higher pricing tiers (we’ll have some holdovers for a bit)
- Pressure for enterprise teams to standardize on Adobe
- More long-term vendor lock-in
Semrush will likely remain available as a standalone tool at first. But Adobe did not spend nearly 2 billion dollars just to leave it alone. Expect deeper integration over the next two to three years.
4. Independent SEO tools will respond
Ahrefs (my current one to watch), Moz, Sistrix, Similarweb, and others will watch closely. Expect them to double down on:
- Transparency
- Technical depth
- Independence from enterprise ecosystems
- Flexible pricing (and hopefully more AI insight access at lower tiers)
- More emphasis on raw data access
This is not the end of independent SEO tools, but it is the beginning of a more divided market. In fact, I personally think Ahrefs has some room to run here.
What Agencies Should Be Thinking About Right Now
1. Prepare clients for reporting changes
Reports focusing only on rankings and backlinks are going to feel outdated fast. Start introducing GEO concepts now so clients are ready.
2. Evaluate which clients are already in Adobe ecosystems
If a client uses Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Marketo, or Experience Manager, adopting Semrush as their visibility engine becomes very likely.
3. Start building AI-conscious content frameworks
This is where Blue Seven shines. We write the hell out of some legal pages. Our legal SEO writers are some of the best in the business. They can write content that focuses on clarity, usefulness, and structure.
Content briefs will need:
- Direct answers
- Clear brand authority signals
- Structured formatting
- Data-backed claims
- Schema where relevant
- Language that AI models recognize as authoritative (which, right now, lends itself to be tricked by “best” language)
However, it’s pretty evident that LLMs tend to cite brands that communicate value clearly, consistently, and confidently.
What In-House Marketing Leaders Should Expect
Leadership may become very interested in AI visibility. In fact, if you’re a law firm marketing director or a FCMO for law firms, you already spend a lot of time talking about this with leadership. Reporting will expand. Tool budgets may shift toward integrated stacks. KPIs will change. CMOs will ask questions like:
“Where do we appear in ChatGPT?”
“How does AI discovery affect our pipeline?”
This is an opportunity to reset how your organization models visibility and measures success.
So Is This Good or Bad for Marketers
Like most big acquisitions, the answer is yes. It is both. It depends. Yeah, something along those lines.
Good
- Unified data
- Better visibility tracking
- Stronger AI search intelligence
- Cross-channel measurement
- Less tool chaos for enterprise teams
Bad
- Prices will rise, if not right away, over time
- Vendor lock-in will increase
- Semrush may lose some scrappy independence
- Smaller competitors may be squeezed (unless they merge)
- Marketers must adapt to AI-driven search faster than expected
Adobe is signaling that the future of brand visibility will live at the intersection of SEO, GEO, content, analytics, and AI assistants. Oh, something we’ve been talking about with out idea of an SEO Ecosystem.
Final Take – A New Era of Brand Visibility
Adobe did not buy Semrush for old-school SEO. The company bought it because the idea of search is shifting, as most of you reading this already know. Everything about how brands get discovered and remembered is changing.
For brands, visibility is no longer limited to page one. It includes:
- AI citations
- Assistant recommendations
- Conversational visibility
- AI-driven shopping and decision flows (where applicable)
For marketers, it means speaking both SEO and GEO fluently, whether we love the term GEO or not. If we hate it, be ready to explain why you don’t like the term in a calm manner. GEO is what people are hearing, and when they come to you for advice, they don’t want to be treated like idiots.
If you want help navigating the shift or building content that performs in an AI-first world, Blue Seven has your back.
