Semrush

Semrush was initially released as Seodigger before becoming a Firefox extension. It was later renamed SeoQuake Company in 2007, before adopting the name Semrush (SEM being an acronym for search engine marketing).

In April 2018, the company raised $40 million in a financing round co-led by venture capital firms Greycroft, E.ventures, and Siguler Guff, to support expansion across research platforms, including those associated with Amazon, Microsoft, and Baidu.

In December 2020, the company updated its visual identity and standardized its name from "SEMrush" to "Semrush".

Semrush completed an initial public offering in March 2021 and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol NYSE: SEMR. The company's S-1 filing reported $213 million in revenue and more than 82,000 customers.

The company’s founders are Russian and relocated to the United States in 2017. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Semrush ceased operations in Russia and offered relocation support to affected staff. In 2024, Semrush acquired the assets of Datos and later acquired Ryte, a German SaaS company.

In March 2025, Bill R. Wagner became CEO, succeeding co-founder Oleg Shchegolev, who transitioned to Chief Technology Officer. In November 2025, Adobe Inc. announced an agreement to acquire Semrush for $1.9 billion. In February 2026, shareholders approved the proposed transaction at a virtual special meeting. Adobe completed the acquisition on April 28, 2026.

Acquisitions made by Semrush include:

• 2022, Backlinko
• 2022, Kompyte, an intelligence and sales platform
• 2023, Traffic Think Tank, a SEO community
• 2024, Third Door Media, the publisher of Search Engine Land
• 2024, Brand24, a brand monitoring platform
• 2024, Ryte, for SEO and user experience
• 2024, Datos, for data analytics
• 2024, Exploding Topics, a data-driven trend discovery platform

The platform provides tools for search engine optimization (SEO), AI search visibility, competitive analysis, content marketing, performance-based advertising, local SEO, website auditing, reporting, and system integration. The platform also includes AI search visibility tools that monitor how brands appear in AI-generated responses on large language model (LLM) platforms such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini.

The keyword research tool provides various data points on each keyword. The platform also collects information about online keywords gathered from Google and Bing search engines.

Semrush acquired Third Door Media, the owner of publications Search Engine Land and MarTech, in October 2024.

Search Engine Land is a news website that covers search engine marketing and search engine optimization. Search Engine Land stories are often cited by other mainstream media and industry publications. It was founded by Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman in 2006.