Adobe has agreed to acquire SEMrush for about $1.9 billion, and I think this is big news. Digital marketers will understand the power of SEMrush as a search engine optimisation tool, and this is new territory for Adobe.
This all-cash merger between Adobe and SEMrush, approved by both boards, is targeted to close in the first half of 2026 pending regulatory approvals and a shareholder vote. Shares in SEMrush jumped by 70% when the news broke.
A reminder
GEO means optimising for how LLMs crawl, embed and synthesise content, focusing on structure, semantics and authority, rather than only keyword rankings.
Semrush has already repositioned from classic SEO to GEO/AI‑search visibility, tracking how brands show up in AI answers across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and others, alongside traditional SERP metrics.
Why is Adobe moving into the SEO and GEO space?
Quite simply, because all signs are that generative engine optimisation (GEO) is going to reshape digital marketing.
Well, traffic from generative AI sources to U.S. retail sites has reportedly grown more than 1,000% year‑on‑year, and Adobe explicitly frames the deal as helping marketers stay “discoverable in AI search” and across LLM‑based assistants, not just classic search engines.
Integrating SEMrush into Adobe Experience Cloud (AEM, Analytics, Brand Concierge, etc.) is meant to give enterprises a single view of how their brand shows up across owned channels, traditional search, generative engines, and the wider web, and then use that intelligence to optimise content and campaigns.
How does this fit Adobe’s AI ambition
- Adobe’s AI ambition is to be the enterprise‑grade, end‑to‑end platform for the “content supply chain”: Firefly and Creative Cloud to generate content, GenStudio and Experience Cloud to manage and deliver it, and now SEMrush data to optimise how it performs in search and AI interfaces.
- Firefly is being positioned as a hub that combines Adobe’s own models with partners like Google and OpenAI, plus services like Firefly Foundry to build custom enterprise models, so adding SEMrush gives Adobe the “where and how customers find you” signal layer that feeds this AI flywheel.
Adobe says the combined offering will give marketers “a holistic understanding of how their brands appear across owned channels, LLMs, traditional search, and the wider web,” implying Semrush data and dashboards will surface directly in Adobe Experience Cloud (AEM, Adobe Analytics, Brand Concierge, etc.).
According to McKinsey, GEO is forecast to sit alongside or even above traditional SEO as AI assistants take a meaningful share of search (some analysts talk about 20–25% of queries by mid‑decade), pushing budgets into tools that understand answer‑engine behavior.
If you’re not repositioning your brand, business or agency for GEO on top of SEO, get moving. It’s the fastest‑growing part of search, and the shift is already underway.
About the Podcast Host
Joanne Sweeney is a specialist in public-sector marketing and digital communications. She’s the author of Public Sector Marketing Pro and the creator of the Professional Diploma in AI for Public Sector Marketing. With years of experience in training, consulting, and advocating for digital transformation, Joanne provides insight and guidance for government agencies navigating the digital landscape. She is also the host of the award-winning Public Sector Marketing Show podcast.
