Deal at a glance

Adobe will acquire Semrush for about $1.9 billion, or $12 a share, in an all-cash transaction that values the SEO and visibility platform at roughly a 77.5 percent premium to its last closing price. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2026, pending regulatory and shareholder approvals.

What Semrush brings to Adobe

Semrush is best known for its search engine optimization tools and visibility analytics. Adobe says adding Semrush will expand its ability to show marketers not only where they rank in traditional search results, but also how their brand appears in AI-generated conversations and discovery across generative systems and large language models.

Why this matters for visibility strategies

The acquisition signals a shift: visibility is no longer just about page rank and backlinks. Brands must now think about how they appear when an AI assistant answers questions or summarizes industries. That introduces new measurement questions — when a large language model responds to queries about a brand or a sector, is that brand cited or surfaced in a way that drives discovery?

The new playbook for marketing teams

Traditional SEO tactics — get to page one, build links, optimize keywords — are still relevant, but they are no longer sufficient on their own. Marketers need to factor in AI-driven discovery: content usefulness for models, sources those models prefer, structured data and signals that help LLMs recognize and cite a brand, and integration between search visibility and AI content ecosystems.

Impact on agencies and smaller businesses

When a major vendor like Adobe folds Semrush into its Experience Cloud, enterprise integrations, pricing tiers, and feature access may change. Smaller agencies and local businesses could feel the strain first, as enterprise customers gain new integrated workflows and budgets consolidate. Mid-sized players should monitor Semrush tiering and Adobe's integration approach to understand potential cost or access shifts.

Opportunity for those willing to adapt

There is also an upside for brands that move quickly. As some competitors continue to rely on old-school SEO tactics, proactive teams can experiment with optimizing for AI visibility, testing content formats that LLMs surface, and creating clearer attribution paths from AI-driven recommendations back to owned channels.

What to watch next

Key signs to monitor include how Adobe integrates Semrush features into Experience Cloud, changes to pricing and tiers, and new tools or metrics oriented specifically to AI visibility. This deal suggests that visibility in the AI era is rising to the board level, and marketers should treat it as a strategic priority rather than a purely tactical challenge.