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Search Engine Optimization Article

All Systems Go for AEO: Conductor’s AgentStack Aims to Power the Next Era of AI Search Visibility 

matt-garrepy

<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/justincook">Justin Cook</a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/dan-drapeau"> </a>is President of Internet Marketing &amp; Development at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.9thco.com/">9thCO</a> and a CMS Critic contributor. <hr /> Since the rise in popularity of ChatGPT and other AI search tools, marketers have watched in horror as KPIs drown in red. Organic traffic continues to decline as users begin to “trust” AI search, oftentimes not even leaving the chat experience to explore a cited brand’s website. This behavior is likely to compound as people increasingly offload tedious research, and therefore marketing teams need to adapt and understand what’s needed in order to “show up” in chat, establishing visibility (a.k.a. “share of voice”). This goes far beyond keyword research and throwing schema markup on your site.A critical piece of understanding is the underlying mental model. When using AI chat to ask questions, if the LLM (predominantly static) doesn’t have the data, then a retrieval layer brings in fresher data via relevant “chunked” search queries in order to synthesize an accurate response. Therefore, the goal is not to “optimize for LLMs,” but rather to understand the mechanics of how LLMs leverage retrieval mechanisms and provide the optimal website markup, performance, accessibility, and data structures to qualify for retrieval. And like it or not, the CMS that powers your website behind the scenes can have a direct impact, depending on rendering, markup, and technical SEO capabilities.<h3 id="a-proposed-paradigm-of-retrievability:-eaca">A Proposed Paradigm of Retrievability: EACA</h3>EACA stands for Eligibility, Authority, Compressibility, and Association. These four areas generally encompass factors that influence discoverability. We won’t touch on Authority in this article, as that’s less about technical infrastructure and more about how you're building your brand.  <h4 id="1.-eligibility">1. Eligibility</h4>When you are engaged in a chat experience, some of the perceived “magic” is that you’re in a natural flow of conversation. Therefore, responses are critically time-bound. If you ask a question and have to wait 15 seconds for the response, you would not continue the conversation. So essentially, Eligibility is the determination of whether a page can be crawled, rendered, and indexed. There are standard CMS considerations such as robots.txt configuration, server-side generation/rendering, caching, and revalidation. What this means practically is that you could be ranking #1 in SERPs for many keywords, yet less likely to be indexed, retrieved, or cited by retrieval mechanisms if your CMS employs lazy-loading, infinite scrolling, JavaScript-based rendering, or weak template-to-content ratios.Properly implemented headless CMS solutions can improve Eligibility by decoupling the frontend, where it is stored statically and served from a global edge network. <h4 id="2.-compressibility">2. Compressibility</h4>Compressibility is about assessing the smallest unit of data and content that something can be reduced to while still remaining accurate. This ensures that content is easy to summarize and embed, without losing precision.Interestingly, one of the most straightforward means to ensure Compressibility is to ensure the highest possible standard of web accessibility on your site. How so? Accessible semantic markup creates a clear content hierarchy for AI retrieval mechanisms, making content easier to chunk and summarize and thereby less ambiguous during compression.Again, your choice of CMS has a material impact on your ability to achieve full web accessibility. The following are common limitations:<ul><li>Theming “engine” architecture</li><li>CMS-specific markup</li><li>Editor tooling constraints</li><li>Plugin ecosystem and rendering methodologies </li><li>Page builder behaviors and data models (or lack thereof)</li></ul>Another major factor for Compressibility (particularly for retailers) is surfacing data points as high-signal, atomic facts. So auditing your data governance from the source to how it’s published through your CMS and marked up on the frontend can have a major impact.Ideally, any selected CMS should provide complete control over the front-end implementation and remove any possible theming constraints. <h4 id="3.-association">3. Association</h4>It’s important that an LLM can properly interpret the appropriate conversations within which your brand and content are relevant. The notion of Association means clearly establishing the concepts, entities, and problems your brand/page/content belongs “with.” Association is established via entity co-occurrence, explicit language, and tight topical clusters, which are not CMS-dependent. However, something that helps further by reducing ambiguity and introducing machine-readable relationships is schema markup. Ensure that your CMS allows you to maximize the use of appropriate schema markup in articles, case studies, etc. But it’s also critical to ensure that the schema markup that is surfaced on the frontend is valid. <h3 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h3>AI search-referred users can be highly qualified and engaged, and more likely to convert. It’s true that digital transformation projects are serious undertakings, but it’s worth the effort to ensure that your CMS can support the technical fundamentals and data structures that feed retrieval mechanisms – and surface your content! <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:34.15%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/logo_jday_hor.png" /><h4 id="joomladay-usa-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/">JoomlaDay USA 2026</a></h4>April 29 - May 2, 2026 – Delray Beach, FloridaBe part of the Joomla community in one of the most iconic cities in the world! JoomlaDay USA 2026 is coming to Delray Beach, and you can join us for a dynamic event packed with insights, workshops, and networking opportunities. Learn from top Joomla experts and developers offering valuable insights and real-world solutions. Participate in interactive workshops and sessions and enhance your skills in Joomla management, development, design, and more. And connect with fellow Joomla enthusiasts, developers, and professionals from across the world.<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/"> Book your seats today.</a> <img style="width:30.06%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/cms-summit-26-logo.jpg" alt="" /><h4 id="cms-summit-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26">CMS Summit 26</a></h4>May 12-13, 2026 – Frankfurt, GermanyThe best conferences create space for honest, experience-based conversations. Not sales pitches. Not hype. Just thoughtful exchanges between people who spend their days designing, building, running, and evolving digital experiences. CMS Summit brings together people who share real stories from their work and platforms and who are interested in learning from each other on how to make things better. Over two days in Frankfurt, you can expect practitioner-led talks grounded in experience, conversations about trade-offs, constraints, and decisions, and time to compare notes with peers facing similar challenges. Space is limited for this exclusive event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26/tickets">so book your seats today.</a> <img style="width:30.13%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/12/image-1765546475634.png" /><h4 id="umbraco-codegarden-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Umbraco Codegarden 2026</a></h4>June 10–11, 2026 – Copenhagen, DKJoin us in Copenhagen (or online) for the biggest Umbraco conference in the world – two full days of learning, genuine conversations, and the kind of inspiration that brings business leaders, developers, and digital creators together. Codegarden 2026 is packed with both business and tech content, from deep-dive workshops and advanced sessions to real-world case studies and strategy talks. You’ll leave with ideas, strategies, and knowledge you can put into practice immediately. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Book your tickets today.</a> <img style="width:36.69%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/open-source-cms-26.jpg" /><h4 id="open-source-cms-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26">Open Source CMS 26</a></h4>October 20–21, 2026 – Utrecht, NetherlandsJoin us for the first annual edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to making open source CMS better. This event is already being called the “missing gathering place” for the open source CMS community – an international conference with confirmed participants from Europe and North America. Be part of a friendly mix of digital leaders from notable open source CMS projects, agencies, even a few industry analysts who get together to learn, network, and talk about what really matters when it comes to creating better open source CMS projects right now and for the foreseeable future. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26/tickets">Book your tickets today.</a>

Does your CMS Impact Your Brand’s Visibility in AI Search?

justincook

<hr /> SEO is a hard-fought battle. Marketers spend a lot of time – and treasure – on manual audits, digging through spreadsheets and poring over tables just to make an incremental dent in performance. Meanwhile, they’re wrestling with the cognitive overload of juggling multiple tools across the stack, forcing swivel-chair moments as they gaze into a swarm of data.Of course, the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joetoscano1/2025/09/03/ai-is-destroying-seo-rank-now-requires-answer-engine-optimization/">seismic shift to AI answer engines</a> is compounding an already precarious challenge. Keeping content accurate, structured, and discoverable across both traditional search engines and AI-driven discovery platforms like ChatGPT is haranguing teams in a vice grip as website traffic withers on the vine – and institutional metrics go out the window.  But this is where <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/kontentai">Kontent.ai </a>is building on its <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/agentic-cms-why-kontentais-vision-for-the-future-of-content-management-is-inspiring">“Agentic CMS” foundation</a> to deliver some relief. Today, the company announced a set of new workflows that are purpose-built to impact the cost and friction associated with these challenges. They’re designed to enhance not only traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but the emerging and uber-critical practice of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_engine_optimization">Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).</a><h3 id="building-on-an-ai-vision-and-heritage">Building on an AI vision and heritage</h3>Kontent.ai has long embraced its artificial intelligence roots (it’s been part of the name since day one), but repositioning its value as an Agentic CMS speaks to its laser focus on AI and its impact on content management and operations. That gives it an edge for addressing the existential challenges that traditional SEO and GEO are presenting to brands and marketers.According to Kontent.ai’s VP of Customer Success, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukas-martinak/">Lukas Martinak,</a> something has changed in the CMS and digital world, and brands are feeling the heat. This came into crystal clarity at the recent <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff26">Boye &amp; Company CMS Kickoff 26. </a>“There was one topic that kept coming up in almost every session and every hallway chat: GEO. Generative Engine Optimization,” he said. “Traffic is down, AI answers are up, and GEO has moved to the boardroom.”He’s absolutely right. Unlike SEO, the C-Suite is hyper-focused on GEO, making it a mission-critical imperative as zero-click searches and crashing traffic become the status quo. This is where Kontent.ai’s new workflows are aiming to make an impact. <h3 id="optimization-without-the-manual-madness">Optimization without the manual madness</h3>Like an intern that never stops for coffee breaks, Kontent.ai’s autonomous agents continuously analyze content for a bevy of issues that can impact SEO and GEO – detecting things like missing or inconsistent metadata, unclear structure, outdated terminology, and weak internal linking. Users can also prompt for an SEO analysis and recommendations across content like blog posts. <figure class="image image-style-align-center image_resized" style="width:67.69%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/seo-analysis.png" /></figure>Source: Kontent.ai But the automation goes even further. Instead of simply surfacing issues for manual follow-up, these intelligent agents can recommend improvements or even apply updates directly within Kontent.ai, mitigating the need for repeated audits and manual rework.  <figure class="image image-style-align-center image_resized" style="width:68.66%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/image.jpeg" alt="A screenshot of a computer

AI-generated content may be incorrect." /></figure>Source: Kontent.ai According to Kontent.ai, some early but compelling use cases demonstrate the success of these new agentic workflows. For example, a global organization managing more than 400,000 content items used them to automate SEO metadata audits and implementation, cutting optimization time by as much as 80%.There’s more. When applied consistently across editorial workflows, Kontent reported that teams saw palpable results – including a 30% increase in organic impressions and expanded keyword coverage, all without increasing paid media spending.  As GEO surfaces as a business mandate, brands are rapidly adopting practices and channeling resources towards optimizing for AI visibility. Many of the agent-driven principles for SEO also support GEO, as they share structural and foundational tenets. With Kontent.ai’s automation, teams can help ensure these content structures are clear and concise for AI systems to interpret accurately – particularly as buyers are increasingly turning to generative search and AI assistants earlier in their discovery. It's worth noting that, unlike most modern SEO tools that are used after publishing, Kontent.ai embeds its optimization directly into the content model and enforces it universally. The net effect is simplification: agent-driven changes are validated against editorial governance, enabling teams to scale optimization without increasing operational complexity or risk. “As SEO and AI-driven discovery converge, optimization can no longer rely on manual effort,” said <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/iannorton/">Ian Norton,</a> VP Marketing at Kontent.ai. “By embedding agentic SEO and GEO directly into content operations, we help teams reduce cost, improve performance, and stay in control at scale.” <h3 id="the-verdict">The verdict</h3>Kontent.ai continues to impress with its clear, elegant, and high-utility application of agentic AI across its platform. While many tools are introducing complexity, Kontent’s focus on real-world use cases for applying its agentic capabilities is a winning position as brands scrutinize the value of their AI tooling and investments. Adding these workflows is yet another example of how it addresses real problems that marketers and content editors face when managing the minutiae of SEO – and the emerging morass of GEO. My recommendation: Since demoing Kontent.ai’s earliest foray into agentic territory, I was instantly drawn to its concise framing of the problem and how its focused application of AI is the solution. That concise delivery is one of the key reasons why it won our “CMS Idol” competition at the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff26">Boye &amp; Company CMS Kickoff 26</a>. With its headless heritage and composable posture, Kontent presents a great solution for enterprise-grade stacks that are leaning AI-forward and require speed and control at scale. During your demo, pay close attention to the real-world content management use cases that their agents are solving – it’s all the proof you’ll need. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:30.06%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/cms-summit-26-logo.jpg" alt="" /><h4 id="cms-summit-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26">CMS Summit 26</a></h4>May 12-13, 2026 – Frankfurt, GermanyThe best conferences create space for honest, experience-based conversations. Not sales pitches. Not hype. Just thoughtful exchanges between people who spend their days designing, building, running, and evolving digital experiences. CMS Summit brings together people who share real stories from their work and platforms and who are interested in learning from each other on how to make things better. Over two days in Frankfurt, you can expect practitioner-led talks grounded in experience, conversations about trade-offs, constraints, and decisions, and time to compare notes with peers facing similar challenges. Space is limited for this exclusive event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26/tickets">so book your seats today.</a> <img style="width:30.13%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/12/image-1765546475634.png" /><h4 id="umbraco-codegarden-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Umbraco Codegarden 2026</a></h4>June 10–11, 2026 – Copenhagen, DKJoin us in Copenhagen (or online) for the biggest Umbraco conference in the world – two full days of learning, genuine conversations, and the kind of inspiration that brings business leaders, developers, and digital creators together. Codegarden 2026 is packed with both business and tech content, from deep-dive workshops and advanced sessions to real-world case studies and strategy talks. You’ll leave with ideas, strategies, and knowledge you can put into practice immediately. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Book your tickets today.</a> <img style="width:40.76%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/open-source-cms-26.jpg" /><h4 id="open-source-cms-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26">Open Source CMS 26</a></h4>October 20–21, 2026 – Utrecht, NetherlandsJoin us for the first annual edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to making open source CMS better. This event is already being called the “missing gathering place” for the open source CMS community – an international conference with confirmed participants from Europe and North America. Be part of a friendly mix of digital leaders from notable open source CMS projects, agencies, even a few industry analysts who get together to learn, network, and talk about what really matters when it comes to creating better open source CMS projects right now and for the foreseeable future. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26/tickets">Book your tickets today.</a>

Kontent.ai Adds AI-Powered SEO and GEO Workflows, Accelerating Content Optimization and Enhancing AI Visibility

<hr /> Well, it happened. I’ve been predicting a move like this for a while, although I thought it might be an up-and-comer like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.conductor.com/">Conductor</a> or even a niche startup like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://otterly.ai/">Otterly.ai</a> elsewhere in the stack.  But then again, it’s <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/adobe-experience-manager">Adobe</a>. And when they go, they go big.And that’s what they’re doing with the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://news.adobe.com/news/2025/11/adobe-to-acquire-semrush">acquisition of Semrush,</a> a stalwart of modern martech and one of the “must-have” tools for search engine optimization over the last decade. Adobe just announced that it will purchase Semrush for the tidy sum of $1.9 billion in an all-cash transaction for $12 per share.The deal is said to close in the first half of 2026, pending regulatory and shareholder approvals. It should be “smoother” sailing, despite the pothole in the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/whats-under-the-fig-leaf-the-naked-truth-about-the-figma-ipo-and-the-markets-appetite-for-tech">rearview that is Figma</a>. Semrush is, comparatively, a tame acquisition that’s almost 20 times less breathtaking than that debacle. No doubt, Adobe is posturing to expand its leadership in the realm of marketing intelligence and the concentration on Generative Search Optimization (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). As competitors like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/optimizely">Optimizely</a> position themselves as <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/welcome-to-the-geo-ready-cms-optimizely-adds-new-features-to-enhance-ai-powered-search">“GEO-ready” platforms</a>, the race is on to give brands more comprehensive tools that address the shift towards AI search discovery.Despite this focus on marketing-centric tools that address the pressures of AI, Adobe lives beyond a single category like DXP or CMP, evolving its value to that of customer experience orchestration in the agentic AI era – and pointing its collective powers at the complete content supply chain, customer engagement, and brand visibility.It's doing all of this with its suite of industry-leading products like the ubiquitous <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/adobe-experience-manager">Adobe Experience Manager (AEM),</a> its unified <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://business.adobe.com/products/adobe-analytics.html">Adobe Analytics</a> suite, and the recently launched <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://business.adobe.com/products/brand-concierge.html">Adobe Brand Concierge</a> for creating interactive, AI-powered conversational journeys.Adding Semrush to this puzzle brings the picture into sharp relief, giving marketers a holistic view of how their brands appear across the new frontier of LLMs, as well as owned channels, legacy search, and the broader web. It also gives them more control over managing their visibility across the entire ecosystem. “Brand visibility is being reshaped by generative AI, and brands that don’t embrace this new opportunity risk losing relevance and revenue,” said <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/achakravarthy/">Anil Chakravarthy,</a> president of Adobe’s Digital Experience Business. “With Semrush, we’re unlocking GEO for marketers as a new growth channel alongside their SEO, driving more visibility, customer engagement and conversions across the ecosystem.”<h3 id="cmos-need-better-tools-to-master-ai-search">CMOs need better tools to master AI search</h3>The Chief Marketing Officer’s job has always been a little cursed. Often a revolving door of talent that lives and dies by the numbers, it has recently grown a bigger backbone when it comes to strategic performance. What's at stake? Pretty much everything. Enterprises are relying on marketing to deliver the goods at a breakneck pace. Meanwhile, CMOs are expected to make sense out of metric tons of data from a wide range of sources and tools – and make actionable decisions that drive growth. It's a tough racket, and forget the fact that a CMO's marketing team is also being challenged by cognitive overload. While brand equity and visibility are key, CMOs face a reckoning with results. According to a report from NIQ, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251118947080/en/CMOs-Face-a-Reputation-and-Results-Reckoning-According-to-NIQs-2026-Outlook">84% of CMOs now prioritize ROI</a> as their primary metric for budget allocation, signaling pressure to drive short-term conversion over long-term brand growth.And driving those conversions is search. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/google-cloud-platform">Google</a> still crushes AI answer engines like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://chatgpt.com/">ChatGPT</a> and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.perplexity.ai/">Perplexity</a>, maintaining roughly 90% of the global search market share. Google’s traffic has continued to increase into 2025 due in part to its new <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://gemini.google/overview/">Gemini-powered AI Overviews</a> and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://search.google/ways-to-search/ai-mode/">AI Mode</a> features.But the landscape is starting to shift. ChatGPT’s adoption has been downright mindboggling, reaching 100 million users within two months of launch, making it the fastest-growing consumer app ever. By late 2024, it was reportedly logging around 1 billion interactions per day. By one account, it could <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ttms.com/llm-powered-search-vs-traditional-search-2025-2030-forecast/">surpass Google by 2028,</a> and new data from <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://business.adobe.com/blog/adi-october-2025-holiday-shopping-actuals">Adobe Analytics</a> showed that traffic from generative AI sources to U.S. retail sites increased by 1,200% year-over-year in October.As consumers increasingly turn to answer engines for information, recommendations, and purchase decisions, CMOs need tools that address generative AI platforms so they can enhance their visibility across these new customer interfaces and drive conversions. Organizations that invest in GEO – alongside their SEO capabilities – are poised to keep their brands well-represented, more easily discovered, and trusted across owned and earned channels.<h3 id="a-legacy-of-seo-innovation-with-a-new-focus-on-geo">A legacy of SEO innovation with a new focus on GEO</h3>Semrush is the gold standard in SEO. It provides a deep cache of rich information, from competitive insights to keyword research to campaign planning. It’s also incredibly intuitive and accessible, with many third-party platforms surfacing Semrush data in their analytics dashboards. For more than ten years, Semrush has armed marketers with “traditional” search engine optimization capabilities. But its recent gains in the development of GEO capabilities – specifically with its <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.semrush.com/ai-seo/">AI Visibility Toolkit</a> – are helping brands enhance visibility, expand audience reach, and remain discoverable in AI search. The good news for marketers is that the core principles of SEO also apply to GEO. Translation: They work together, and you don’t need to abandon your SEO strategy to build your presence across the AI engines. AI assistants provide helpful and (hopefully) accurate information to users, and they pull that information from the same internet your SEO-focused content lives on. Generally speaking, the more your brand is associated with the topics you want to focus on, the more likely it is to be referenced in an AI-generated answer.The combination of Adobe and Semrush could be a catalyst for even greater insight across both the SEO and GEO channels. Marketers need both, and Adobe's consolidation will likely benefit both competencies. “Adobe is an industry leader in helping marketers create personalized customer experiences at scale. With the advent of LLMs and AI-driven search, brands need to understand where and how their customers are engaging in these new channels,” said <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamrwagner/">Bill Wagner,</a> chief executive officer of Semrush. “This combination provides marketers more insights and capabilities to increase their discoverability across today’s evolving digital landscape.”From a performance standpoint, Semrush has been bringing the rain. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://increv.co/academy/semrush-users/">As of last year,</a> it boasted nearly 1.2 million users with annual revenue of over $300 million. In its most recent quarter, it drove 33% year-over-year ARR growth in its enterprise customer segment, earning the trust of industry leaders like Amazon, JPMorganChase, and TikTok.It’s worth noting that Semrush does have a large cohort of free-tier users (by one estimate, it represents as much as 90% of its base). This speaks to the company’s commitment to deliver value while building a strong SaaS pipeline to future paid users. Will Adobe maintain that? Only time will tell, but it’s a great example of a “Big Give” that works.<h3 id="the-verdict">The verdict</h3>GEO is becoming a crucial objective for brands and their marketing teams. This is a non-negotiable requirement of their modern tooling, and will inform the decision-making as they assess technologies to light these dark alleyways in their marketing intelligence.  Semrush and its peers might be innovating on the edge, but we’re still in catch-up mode. Every day could be another <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://greylock.com/greymatter/the-deepseek-moment/">DeepSeek moment</a> of change, threatening to send practitioners back into a well of shadows when it comes to LLM behaviors. As such, having the scale and skunkworks that Adobe provides could inject more value into the GEO roadmap, giving enterprises greater confidence around the futureproofing.This isn't “guesttimation” for me. I’ve personally relied on Semrush for years to analyze competitors, test longtail keywords, identify and root out toxic backlinks, and more. It’s a fantastic tool, and that’s why I think this is a smart move. Semrush is a solid, long-standing brand that’s built deep trust with its community, and that brand loyalty could benefit the transition to Adobe – a shift that hasn’t always been easy on cultures or communities.Is it worth the bucks? As far as the tendered deal is concerned, the math around multiples appears sound and reflects what we’re seeing elsewhere (early to say if it’s a steal or a deal). While the numbers aren’t as mammoth, 2025 has been a solid year for M&amp;A, tracking a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.reuters.com/business/global-ma-activity-up-10-first-nine-months-2025-study-shows-2025-10-28/">10% increase in overall activity</a> in the first nine months of the year. A lot of that has been led by tech and specifically AI-related acquisitions, but the martech realm has been active, starting with the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/contentstack-just-acquired-lytics-a-real-time-customer-data-platform-heres-why-it-matters">purchase of the Lytics CDP</a> by <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/contentstack">Contentstack</a> in January of this year.Competitive pressure is a clear driver. As players like Optimizely and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/sitecore">Sitecore</a> expand their agentic AI features and evolve what a complete martech stack looks like, GEO capabilities are becoming front and center. And as the research indicates, conversions are going to be the key metric for ROI – and AI search is becoming a bigger piece of the integrated pie. What’s next? A lot. With the introduction of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://openai.com/index/buy-it-in-chatgpt/">ChatGPT’s Agentic Commerce Protocol,</a> we’re now seeing the potential for more retail transactions shifting to LLMs – creating even greater urgency for brands to elevate their presence across these channels. As we look ahead to the agent-to-agent frontier powered by <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/getting-started/intro">MCP,</a> it’s fair to predict that these buying motions will be faster and increasingly automated.Look, there’s more here than just broadening the scope of Adobe’s marketing intelligence. It’s a signal that the race is on to shape the customer experience within the generative AI horizon – and giving marketers the best tools to meet the moment.Enterprises want composable solutions that offer adjacent integrations but include purpose-built features to help them address the immediate challenges of the AI era. And they can’t wait for tomorrow – they have to act today. That’s what Adobe is delivering: the promise of speed and scale for an agentic world.Can you feel the rush? <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:29.67%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/10/image-1761136749603.png" /><h4 id="live-webinar:-can-we-ever-get-composable-without-complexity?"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://umbraco.com/webinar-cmscritic">Live Webinar: Can We Ever Get Composable Without Complexity?</a></h4>November 20, 2025 – 6 PM (CET) / 5 PM (GMT) / 12 PM (EST)Composable architecture promised to simplify digital experience creation by giving organizations the flexibility to combine the technologies that met their needs. But for many enterprises, it’s done the opposite, which has led to complex integrations, spiraling costs, and what some are now referring to as composable regret. In this live conversation, Umbraco CEO Mats Persson joins Matt Garrepy, Chief Content Officer at CMS Critic, for a candid exploration of what went wrong in the first wave of composable and what needs to change. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://umbraco.com/webinar-cmscritic">Register for the webinar.</a> <img style="width:29.08%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/10/image-1761594434824.png" /><h4 id="typo3-conference-2025"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://t3con.typo3.com/">TYPO3 Conference 2025</a></h4>November 25–27, 2025 – Düsseldorf, GermanyT3CON is the premier annual event for web professionals, developers, marketers, and decision-makers. Much more than just a TYPO3-focused conference, T3CON spotlights the latest trends, innovations, and leaders shaping the future of content management, covering everything from grassroots initiatives to new technologies, strategies, and success stories. The event is designed to empower businesses and organizations with the knowledge and tools they need to thrive in the evolving digital landscape. The conference culminates in an awards ceremony celebrating the best TYPO3 projects across various industries. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://t3con.typo3.com/">Get your ticket.</a> <img style="width:31.44%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/08/cms-kickoff-2026-logo.png" alt="" /><h4 id="cms-kickoff-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff26">CMS Kickoff 2026</a></h4>January 13-14, 2026 – St. Petersburg, FLMeet industry leaders at our fourth annual CMS Kickoff – the industry's premier global CMS event. Similar to a traditional kickoff, we reflect on recent trends and share stories from the frontlines. Additionally, we will delve into the current happenings and shed light on the future. Prepare for an unparalleled in-person CMS conference experience that will equip you to move things forward. This is an exclusive event – space is limited, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff26">so secure your tickets today.</a>

Feel the GEO Rush: Adobe to Acquire Semrush for $1.9B to Enhance AI Search

Conductor AI ‘Revs Up’ Brand Discoverability in Generative AI Answer Engines

<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/dan-drapeau">Dan Drapeau </a>is Managing Director at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://dxpcatalyst.com/">DXP Catalyst Consulting</a> and a CMS Critic contributor. <hr /> Search is changing. Instead of typing keywords and clicking through ranked pages, users increasingly expect fast, relevant answers, often delivered through conversational tools like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://chatgpt.com/">ChatGPT</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.perplexity.ai/">Perplexity</a>, or intelligent site search. They’re landing on your website “from the side,” bypassing the homepage, and expecting to ask questions in natural language and get immediate responses.This shift, accelerated by the rise of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-search/">Search Generative Experience (SGE)</a> and the emergence of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://searchengineland.com/what-is-generative-engine-optimization-geo-444418">Generative Engine Optimization (GEO),</a> is reshaping how digital platforms are selected and structured. Traditional SEO practices are no longer sufficient. Content must now be discoverable by both search engines and generative AI systems.To keep pace, organizations are reevaluating their digital architecture. Some are adopting full-featured Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs), while others are building their own solution ecosystems using best-of-breed tools like CMS, enterprise search, analytics, and more. Regardless of the approach, the same principles apply: content must be structured for reuse, delivered intelligently across channels, and trackable at every touchpoint.Here are three key areas I focus on when helping organizations evaluate the readiness of their digital experience ecosystem, which is what a modern DXP truly represents, in the era of conversational search.<h3 id="1.--structured-content-and-findability-by-design">1.  Structured Content and Findability by Design</h3>At the heart of any DXP or composable solution is the content layer, powered by a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/what-is-a-content-management-system-cms">content management system (CMS).</a> It governs how content is created, structured, and published. To support SGE and GEO, this layer must do more than manage pages. It needs to produce structured, reusable content that systems can understand and deliver in context.Generative AI tools require predictable, well-modeled inputs. Content trapped in PDFs, inconsistent formats, or unstructured blobs is unlikely to be surfaced accurately. Structured content models, semantic tagging, and field-level metadata are essential for discoverability.When evaluating a DXP or CMS, look for:<ul><li>API-accessible metadata and structured content elements</li><li>Support for semantic models and content relationships</li><li>Schema markup applied consistently across content types</li><li>Editorial workflows for FAQs, summaries, or step-by-step formats</li><li>Extensibility for AI use cases like conversational grounding or previews</li></ul>Findability starts with how content is modeled. If it cannot be accessed or interpreted by AI, it will be excluded from conversational experiences.<h3 id="2.--search-integration-that-supports-conversational-interfaces">2.  Search Integration That Supports Conversational Interfaces</h3>Conversational search is not limited to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/chatbot/">chatbots.</a> It can be delivered through a standard search bar, as long as the system can interpret natural language, understand context, and return more tailored responses. The interface may look familiar, but the experience is far more dynamic.Delivering on that promise requires search capabilities that extend beyond CMS indexing. Your architecture should support:<ul><li>API-based indexing of structured content and product data</li><li>Multi-source search across support content, blogs, product catalogs (if applicable), and more</li><li>Fine-tuned ranking, filtering, and fallback logic</li><li>Compatibility with conversational UX, such as voice or natural language input</li></ul>Some DXPs are starting to offer search integrations with conversational overlays or even <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/retrieval-augmented-generation/">RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)</a> frameworks. Even if you’re not enabling full conversational search today, the technical foundation should be ready.<h3 id="3.--governance-and-observability">3.  Governance and Observability</h3>As generative interfaces become the first point of interaction for many users, governance and observability are no longer optional. Teams must control what is published, how it is indexed, and how it performs in real-world usage.Your CMS or DXP should provide access controls, publishing workflows, preview tools, and the ability to manage visibility through scoped indexing, robots.txt, or noindex tags. While you cannot always prevent AI from referencing public content, you can influence how and where it appears.Beyond control, your team needs visibility. Modern platforms should offer analytics that go beyond traffic and conversions to include:<ul><li>User search queries and failed results</li><li>AI interpretation of structured content</li><li>Behavioral patterns that reveal content gaps</li><li>Metadata performance insights and tuning opportunities</li></ul>These feedback loops help you identify what users are looking for, where they are not finding it, and how to improve content delivery. Observability is critical for adapting to shifting search behavior.<h3 id="what-to-do-next">What to Do Next</h3>You do not need to solve for every edge case today. But as SGE and conversational interfaces gain traction, platform evaluations must evolve.Use this checklist to guide your next discussion:<ul><li>Is your content layer structured to support AI-ready delivery?</li><li>Can your systems surface and connect that content across search, personalization, and chat interfaces?</li><li>Do you have insight into how users are interacting with content, including intent signals and discovery gaps?</li></ul>Search is no longer just a feature. It is becoming the interface between your users and your brand. Whether you are investing in a traditional DXP or building a best-of-breed composable stack, choose an architecture that is structured, discoverable, and observable – one that supports GEO from day one. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:31.83%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/01/cms-connect-2025-logo.png" alt="" /><h4 id="cms-connect-25"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect25">CMS Connect 25</a></h4>August 5-6, 2025 – Montreal, CanadaWe are delighted to present the second annual summer edition of our signature global conference dedicated to the content management community! CMS Connect will be held again in beautiful Montreal, Canada, and feature a unique blend of masterclasses, insightful talks, interactive discussions, impactful learning sessions, and authentic networking opportunities. Join vendors, agencies, and customers from across our industry as we engage and collaborate around the future of content management – and hear from the top thought leaders at the only vendor-neutral, in-person conference exclusively focused on CMS. Space is limited for this event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect25">so book your seats today.</a>

3 Things to Look for in a DXP as Conversational Search Changes the Game

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CMS Summit 26

Find out at CMS Connect 26, August 4-5 in Montreal, Canada

What's ahead for CMS in the agentic era?

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