Something massive just dropped in the digital marketing world. Adobe’s buying Semrush for $1.9 billion, and if you work anywhere near SEO or content, this is going to reshape your entire workflow. Not eventually. Starting now.
The Deal That Nobody Saw Coming
Adobe’s shelling out $12 per share in cash for Semrush. That’s roughly double what the company was trading at before news broke. The transaction should close by mid-2026, give or take, assuming regulators don’t throw any curveballs and shareholders vote yes.
Semrush isn’t exactly a mom-and-pop operation. They’ve amassed data on 26 billion keywords. They monitor hundreds of millions of domains globally. More than 1.1 million people actively use the platform—including teams at Amazon, JPMorganChase, and TikTok. Adobe just acquired the backbone of modern SEO intelligence.
Why This Actually Matters (Spoiler: It’s Not Just About SEO)
I’ve spent years in this industry, and what’s happening right now is unlike anything I’ve seen before. SEO used to mean one thing: rank higher on Google. Period. End of story.
That playbook is already outdated.
When was the last time you actually Googled something? Maybe you asked ChatGPT instead. Or got your answer from Claude. Perhaps Perplexity gave you what you needed. Your customers are doing the exact same thing—and if your brand doesn’t show up in those AI-generated responses, you’re invisible.
This acquisition isn’t about traditional search. Semrush has spent the last couple years building tools for something called Generative Engine Optimization—GEO, not SEO. It’s how you optimize for AI platforms that are increasingly replacing search engines as the primary discovery channel.
Anil Chakravarthy, who heads Adobe’s Digital Experience Business, put it bluntly: brands that ignore this shift will lose customers and revenue. He’s absolutely right, and the $1.9 billion price tag proves Adobe believes it too.
What This Means for Your Marketing Stack
Let’s get practical. If you’re running marketing for any company (or working with an agency like OnzeeOnWeb), here’s what’s about to change.
Your tools are converging. Adobe already has Experience Manager, Analytics, and their Brand Concierge platform. Layer Semrush’s intelligence on top of that and you get something we’ve never had before: one unified view of your performance across owned channels, traditional search, and AI platforms. No more switching between six different dashboards to understand how you’re actually performing.
The creative workflow is evolving too. Picture this: you’re designing marketing assets in Creative Cloud, and they’re automatically optimized for both human audiences and AI discovery. Not just beautiful—strategically visible across every channel that matters. That’s the direction Adobe’s heading.
Then there’s the tracking problem that’s plagued marketers forever. You could see search intent. You could see conversions. But everything in between was a black box. With Semrush’s search data married to Adobe’s customer experience platform, you’ll finally track the complete journey—from initial curiosity to final purchase, across traditional search and AI platforms alike.
Here’s something else that’s shifting: “answer rank” is replacing keyword rankings. It’s not about position #3 on Google anymore. It’s about whether AI assistants mention your brand when people ask relevant questions. Completely different metrics. Completely different strategy.
The Competitive Landscape Just Got Messy
Adobe threw down a challenge to every major player in martech. Salesforce doesn’t have anything like this AI visibility layer. Neither does HubSpot. I guarantee you’ll see both of them either building or buying similar capabilities within the year. They don’t have a choice.
This also settles a debate that’s been raging in marketing circles: is SEO dead? Absolutely not. AI didn’t kill SEO—it transformed it into something more complex and more strategically important than ever. The companies that figure out how to do both traditional SEO and GEO effectively are going to dominate their markets.
But There’s Some Skepticism
Not everyone’s celebrating. Plenty of SEO professionals are nervous about what Adobe ownership means for Semrush. Will pricing skyrocket? Will the product lose its independence? Will Adobe change the things that actually make Semrush useful? These concerns aren’t paranoia—they’re based on watching plenty of acquisitions go sideways.
Adobe’s track record is hit or miss. Remember when they tried buying Figma in 2023? That deal imploded under regulatory scrutiny. Though the Semrush situation is different—these companies aren’t direct competitors the way Adobe and Figma were.
The Bigger Picture Everyone’s Missing
Zoom out for a second. This acquisition is Adobe betting nearly two billion dollars on a specific vision of marketing’s future: the convergence of creative production, data intelligence, and AI optimization.
And honestly? They’re probably right. Creating great content isn’t sufficient anymore. You need great content that AI systems can find, interpret, and recommend to users. That’s not the future—that’s the present reality we’re living in right now.
For businesses navigating this landscape, the message is crystal clear. You need expertise in both traditional SEO fundamentals and these emerging GEO strategies. The companies that treat this transition as optional are going to get left behind while their competitors figure it out.
What We’re Watching For
The deal should close sometime between January and June 2026. Between now and then, the entire digital marketing industry will be scrutinizing every detail. Can Adobe integrate Semrush successfully without destroying what makes it valuable? How will Salesforce and HubSpot respond? What unexpected innovations emerge from combining these platforms?
I can’t predict the future, but the trend is unmistakable. Brand visibility is being redefined in real-time. Not in some hypothetical future scenario—right now, this week, this month. Adobe’s $1.9 billion bet says that visibility will be measured across the entire AI-mediated digital ecosystem, not just traditional search rankings.
For marketers, the message couldn’t be clearer. Either adapt to this new reality, or watch your competitors gain ground while you’re still playing by yesterday’s rules.
SEO isn’t dying. It’s evolving into something more sophisticated, more strategic, and frankly more fascinating than what we’ve been doing for the past twenty years. The real question isn’t whether you should pay attention—it’s whether you’re ready to evolve alongside it.
At OnzeeOnWeb , we stay ahead of these industry shifts so our clients don’t have to navigate them alone. Want to discuss how to position your brand for the GEO era? Let’s talk. We’re here to help you stay visible in whatever comes next.