Semrush 2025: The Year in Review

2025 was a year where the ground beneath marketers shifted seismically. Discovery changed, with AI summaries gaining popularity, new search engines emerging, and visibility evolving beyond traditional rankings. The real challenge wasn’t choosing between SEO and AI; it was learning how to master both. 

Amidst this rapidly evolving landscape, marketers needed clarity. They needed signals they could trust, and solutions to remain visible as discovery became fragmented.

Through it all, Semrush was there for customers every step of the way. 

As AI accelerated, many teams feared SEO was fading. Our data — and our customers’ experiences — told a more nuanced story.

Marketers didn’t need another dashboard; they needed a new compass. That’s why we centered our work around one unifying idea: Digital Brand Visibility, or understanding where a brand shows up across every modern discovery experience. Visibility today isn’t defined solely by rankings, links, or keywords — it’s shaped by the full spectrum of how people encounter a brand. 

The need for clarity was urgent, as the data showed:

The real challenge wasn’t choosing sides. It was learning how to win both. That insight shaped what we built in 2025.

To help marketers win every search, no matter where that search begins, Semrush expanded our platform, helped teams navigate change with clarity, and stay competitive.

Winning Inside AI: Enterprise teams needed a way to track, benchmark, and optimize how their brands appear inside AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Perplexity. We delivered the world’s enterprise-grade solution, AI Optimization (AIO) to help see which prompts a brand appears for, understand sources and citations, benchmark against competitors, compare AI search performance vs. SEO performance, and audit and optimize content.

AIO made waves, with brands like Amazon, LG Electronics, and TikTok pioneering AI visibility. For example, Roche Diagnostics International saw a 67% share of voice across 1,500 tracked prompts in just three months. 

A Faster, Smarter Way to Work: Toolkits. Marketers told us they needed a faster, more guided workflow, better aligned with how discovery now works. We launched Semrush Toolkits in May, a collection of AI-powered workspaces designed around real marketer goals—from SEO and content creation to advertising and competitor research. Toolkits combine our most powerful features, data, and insights in one intuitive flow, creating a new way of working.

The Single View of Trust: Semrush One. In Q4, we unveiled our most ambitious platform yet, Semrush One, to unite traditional SEO tools with powerful AI search and GEO capabilities. With SEO and AI search capabilities, marketers can win every search by seeing where their brands surface, how competitors show up beside them, and where visibility is gained or lost.

Moving Faster with Greater Clarity: With AI prevailing everywhere, marketers moved faster than ever. They told us that speed alone wasn’t the challenge; clarity was. To help get the most out of work days and tools, we flowed in 80+ AI Search updates and features and redesigned key parts of the platform. We also enhanced our foundation of data to ensure your intelligence is strong, spanning: 27B+ keywords, 800M+ domains, 43T+ backlinks, and insight from 130M+ modern discovery signals. 

Building for the World’s Biggest Teams: For global brands, stakes were even higher. With massive websites, regional content, and multilayered customer journeys, even slight drops in visibility carry significant consequences. Site Intelligence helped stabilize the technical core of large websites so that they’re prepared for both SEO and AI discovery; and our new Enterprise Partner Program mobilizes more than 35 agencies and consultancies to bring Semrush’s capabilities to their own client portfolios, helping ambitious brands worldwide adopt AI-ready visibility strategies.

Throughout the year, teams didn’t just ask how to adapt — they asked why discovery was changing in the first place. Semrush documented the shift in real time.

Semrush published over 100 data stories exploring:

And when marketers wondered how visible their brands are inside AI systems, we built the answer: the AI Visibility Index — the global benchmark showing which brands win the most visibility in ChatGPT and Google AI Mode, and why.

This research-informed coverage in outlets like The Drum, Search Engine Land, and others, and gave marketers a clear view into how AI Search affects discovery, traffic, and revenue.

Analysts and peer reviews told a consistent story: in a year defined by rapid change, Semrush became the platform teams trusted to navigate the new visibility landscape.

2025 marked a turning point in how people look for information – and how brands are discovered. Visibility became fluid, dynamic, and earned moment by moment.

Our customers pushed us to build faster, smarter, and with purpose. The brands that will lead the next decade are the ones that understand a simple reality:

To our customers, partners, employees, creators, and the global community that brings ideas, feedback, and momentum to Semrush every day – thank you. You helped define what digital brand visibility means today, and your trust pushed us to build faster, smarter, and with purpose.

See you in 2026 — we’ll build the next chapter together.