Semrush Holdings, Inc. is an American public company that has a

SaaS Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike oth ...

platform known as Semrush. The platform is used for keyword research, competitive analysis, site audits,

backlink From the point of view of a given web resource (referent), a backlink is a regular hyperlink on another web resource (the referrer) that points to the referent. A ''web resource'' may be (for example) a website, web page, or web directory. A ba ...

tracking, and online visibility insights. The keyword research tool provides various data points on each keyword. The platform also collects information about online keywords gathered from

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

and

Bing Bing most often refers to: * Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer * Microsoft Bing, a web search engine Bing may also refer to: Food and drink * Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread * Bing (soft drink), a UK brand * Bing cherry, a varie ...

search engines. It was released by

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

-based company Semrush Inc, founded by Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitri Melnikov. As of 2025, the company has 1000+ employees and offices in

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

Belgrade Belgrade is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin, Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula. T ...

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

Yerevan Yerevan ( , , ; ; sometimes spelled Erevan) is the capital and largest city of Armenia, as well as one of the world's List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited cities. Situated along the Hrazdan River, Yerev ...

, Limassol,

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

, and

Dallas Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...

. It went public in March 2021 and trades on .

History

Semrush was first released as Seodigger before becoming an

extension Extension, extend or extended may refer to: Mathematics Logic or set theory * Axiom of extensionality * Extensible cardinal * Extension (model theory) * Extension (proof theory) * Extension (predicate logic), the set of tuples of values that ...

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

, then renamed SeoQuake Company in 2007, before landing on Semrush (the

acronym An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial Letter (alphabet), letter of each wor ...

SEM stands for

Search engine marketing Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising. SEM may incorporate search engine op ...

). In April 2018, the company received $40 million in funding as part of a financing transaction co-led by

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

firms

Greycroft Greycroft LP is an American venture capital firm. It manages over $3 billion in capital with investments in companies such as Bird Global, Bird, Bumble (app), Bumble, HuffPost, Goop (company), Goop, Scopely, The RealReal, and Venmo. Greycroft wa ...

, E.ventures and Siguler Guff, in preparation for its expansion into various platforms of research, including those owned by

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

, and

Baidu Baidu, Inc. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet services and artificial intelligence. It holds a dominant position in China's search engine market (via Baidu Search), and provides a wide variety of o ...

. In December 2020, the company rebranded with a new visual identity, updating its name from "SEMrush" to "Semrush". In March 2021, Semrush had an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

and went public on

NYSE The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...

under the symbol . The S-1 form revealed that the company had sales of $213 million and more than 82,000 customers. Semrush's founders are Russian, and relocated to the US in 2017. In response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the company ceased all operations in Russia and offered relocation to Russian-based staff to other European countries. In June 2022, the company launched a beta tool for content generation called ''Content Outline Builder''. The tool will suggest ideas for article writing and blog posts. Semrush also announced on June 27, 2022, that their Backlinks insights data is now integrated with SurferSEO, a marketing tool focused on content creation. In June 2024, Semrush launched "Semrush Enterprise", an AI-driven platform to streamline digital marketing for large businesses. In March 2025, Bill R. Wagner became CEO of Semrush, succeeding co-founder Oleg Shchegolev, who transitioned to the role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Wagner is the former CEO of GoTo Group.

Acquisitions

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 publisher of ''Search Engine Land'' * 2024 – Brand24, a brand monitoring platform * 2024 – Ryte, for SEO and

user experience User experience (UX) is how a user interacts with and experiences a product, system or service. It includes a person's perceptions of utility, ease of use, and efficiency. Improving user experience is important to most companies, designers, a ...

* 2024 – Datos, for

data analytics Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data, which also falls under and directly relates to the umbrella term, data sci ...

* 2024 – Exploding Topics, a SEO training platform

References

{{reflist, 2 Internet search Online databases Search engine optimization companies Internet terminology Search engine optimization 2008 software Internet properties established in 2008 2021 initial public offerings Companies based in Boston Companies_listed_on_the_New_York_Stock_Exchange