Semrush: SEO and AI Visibility Tracking, Now Owned by Adobe

What is Semrush?

Semrush is an SEO and brand visibility platform, founded in 2008 and now headquartered in Boston. As of April 28, 2026, Adobe completed a $1.9 billion acquisition of Semrush, and it now operates as "Semrush, an Adobe company," folded into Adobe's Customer Experience Orchestration business alongside tools like Adobe Experience Manager.

Semrush reports 28 million+ users globally and runs one of the largest keyword and backlink databases available (28 billion keywords, 43 trillion backlinks). Since the acquisition news, Semrush has pushed hard into AI Visibility, tracking how often and how favorably AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews mention your brand, alongside its long-standing traditional SEO tools.

What is Semrush used for?

The most common use case is tracking where you actually stand, both in Google rankings and in AI-generated answers, then finding the specific, prioritized fixes to improve both. You connect a domain, and Semrush crawls it for technical SEO issues while also monitoring how AI engines currently describe or cite you.

A solo consultant tracks 500 keywords relevant to their niche daily, seeing exactly where a competitor is outranking them and what content gap explains it. A course creator uses AI Visibility Reports to see, prompt by prompt, whether ChatGPT or Perplexity currently recommends them when someone asks a relevant question, and what would change that.

Semrush MCP connects the platform's live data directly into Claude or another AI assistant, letting you ask a question like "what's my biggest content gap this month" and get an answer grounded in your actual Semrush data, not a generic response.

Semrush Capabilities

AI Visibility Tracking

Monitors how often and how favorably ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI mention your brand, tracked at the individual prompt level, not just a general "are we mentioned" check.

Site Audit

Crawls your site for technical SEO and AI-readiness issues, ranking fixes by likely impact rather than handing you an undifferentiated list.

Position Tracking

Monitors daily keyword rankings (500-5,000 depending on plan) across both traditional Google results and AI-generated answers.

Semrush MCP

Brings Semrush's live competitive and visibility data directly into Claude or another connected AI assistant, so you can ask strategic questions and get answers grounded in real data rather than a generic response.

Massive Underlying Dataset

28 billion+ keywords, 43 trillion backlinks, and 808 million domain profiles across 142 geographic databases, a genuinely large dataset most smaller competitors can't match.

Who uses Semrush?

Marketers & Advertisers

Content Creators & Bloggers

Founders & Executives

Small Agencies

B2B SaaS / Tech Startups

Consultants & Professional Services

Who Gets Real Value From Semrush

Established Solo Founders

Ideal for those with an ongoing content or SEO practice who need real competitive and AI-citation data to justify continued investment in that channel.

Boutique Agencies

Highly effective for tracking multiple client sites, monitoring keyword rankings, and providing detailed SEO and AI visibility reports.

Content Strategy Consultants

Perfect for utilizing the massive dataset to identify content gaps, analyze competitor performance, and track prompt-level AI visibility.

Semrush Features

SEO

Keyword research and optimization, competitor analysis, Position Tracking, Site Audit, backlink analysis, keyword cannibalization detection (Pro+ and up), SEO share of voice (Advanced).

AI Visibility

Prompt-level AI citation tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI, AI sentiment monitoring, AI visibility reports for any domain, custom prompt monitoring, AI-ready Site Audit.

Content

Topic and content idea generation, real-time content scoring and optimization, historical SEO data (Pro+ and up).

Local & Advertising

Google Business Profile optimization, local directory tracking, Google and Meta ad campaign insights and testing.

Reporting

Base Report (20+ tool data, Google Analytics/Search Console integration, PDF export, add-on), Pro Report (white-labeling, AI-generated summaries, add-on).

Enterprise

Multi-brand AI visibility, forecasting and ROI attribution, multi-million-page crawling, custom API integrations, SSO and audit logs.

About Semrush Pricing

Social Toolkit (Base)

$20 /month

Local Toolkit (Base)

$30 /month

Content Toolkit

$60 /month

AI Visibility Toolkit

$99 /month

Advertising Toolkit (Base)

$99 /month

SEO Classic (Pro)

$139.95 /month

AI PR Toolkit

$149 /month

Semrush One (Starter)

$199 /month

SEO Classic (Guru)

$249.95 /month

Traffic & Market Toolkit

$289 /month

SEO Classic (Business)

$499.95 /month

Semrush One (Advanced)

$549 /month

Semrush's pricing reflects its enterprise-grade data, starting significantly higher than most solo-founder tools.

Free Plan: 1 demo project, 10 reports/day across all tools. Essentially a trial experience.
SEO: $139/month (monthly) / $117.33/month (annual). Includes 5 websites, 500 keywords tracked daily, basic keyword research, Site Audit, and basic AI visibility features.
Starter (SEO + AI Search): $199/month (monthly) / $165.17/month (annual). Includes 5 websites, 500 keywords, MCP access, and tracks 50 AI prompts daily.
Pro+ (SEO + AI Search): $299/month (monthly) / $248.17/month (annual). Includes 15 websites, 1,500 keywords, historical data, and tracks 100 AI prompts daily.
Advanced (SEO + AI Search): $549/month (monthly) / $455.67/month (annual). Includes 40 websites, 5,000 keywords, API data integration, and tracks 200 AI prompts daily.

Note on Annual Billing: Annual billing saves up to 17% across every core plan.

What Semrush Replaces in Your Stack

✓ Can Replace

A patchwork of separate free tools, like Google Search Console, a basic keyword tool, and manual competitor spot-checks, consolidated into one connected dataset.
Manually asking each AI engine individually whether it mentions your brand, replaced by systematic, prompt-level AI Visibility tracking across multiple engines at once.
Guessing which content topics are worth writing, since keyword and topic research surfaces what's actually searched and cited.

→ Sits Alongside

An actual content writing tool. Semrush surfaces topics, scores drafts, and identifies gaps, but you (or a separate AI writing tool) still do the actual drafting.
Your website's CMS. Semrush's Site Audit finds and prioritizes technical issues, but fixing them happens in WordPress, Webflow, or wherever your site actually lives.
PR outreach relationship-building. The AI PR toolkit surfaces relevant, AI-trusted media contacts and drafts pitches, but the actual relationship work stays human.

Honest Note

⚠️ Worth knowing: This tool's real starting price sits well above the $19-49/month range most solo founders budget for software. The cheapest genuinely usable plan is $117-139/month, before any add-ons. Make sure your content or SEO practice is generating enough return to justify that before committing. It's also worth watching how Adobe's ownership shapes the product over the next year; acquired companies sometimes shift pricing or roadmap priority toward larger enterprise customers over time.

Prices last verified August 2026. Check Semrush's pricing page for current rates before subscribing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Possibly, if you manage more than 5 websites or need deeper AI prompt tracking. But the bigger question for most solo founders is whether the entry-level $117-139/month price is justified at all; that's a much larger jump than most tools reviewed on this site.

About 30-45 minutes to run your first audit and see a baseline. Meaningful ranking or AI visibility improvement from acting on Semrush's recommendations takes weeks to months; this is a monitoring and strategy tool, not an instant fix.

It's a demo experience. 1 project and 10 reports a day is enough to explore the interface, not to run real, ongoing tracking for your business.

Potentially, yes. The acquisition completed in April 2026, and Semrush is now part of Adobe's enterprise Customer Experience Orchestration business. It's reasonable to expect the roadmap to lean further toward enterprise customers over time; worth watching if you're committing to this as a long-term tool.

Probably not yet. Semrush's value compounds with an established publishing practice and real competitive stakes. A newer solo founder is better served starting with a lower-cost tool like Frase and revisiting Semrush once content is a proven, working channel.

Semrush's AI Visibility tracking is broader and more data-rich, backed by a much larger underlying dataset, but it comes at a significantly higher price point. Frase's GEO tracking is narrower in scope but far more accessible for a solo founder's budget, and covers full 5-engine tracking only on its higher tiers too; worth comparing both directly against your actual budget.

What Is Semrush?