About that SemRush Buying 3rd Door Media.
It happened while a conference was going on – and that may have contributed – to so many questions put to me about the Third Door Media sale to SemRush. I was taken a bit aback by so many people asking about it, that I was taking a “wait and see” approach. Then after reading and hearing much of the reaction to it, my thoughts quickly firmed up to the point I wanted to say something publicly.
Lets first make sure everyone understands the situation:
#1: Third Door seems to have taken it on the chin after Danny Sullivan took another job Google.
- First, the major senior players left from SEL and SMX. I won’t name names – it is well documented on the socials – I respect their privacy and need to move onward. These were some of the most respected people in all SEO.
Then, a bunch of the support staff left as well. We can debate and discuss the reasons for that another day, but suffice to say – it happened. - Then Covid lockdown hit. That further killed the events business at SMX.
- Virtual drainage? Regardless of what rumors you may have heard about virtual conferences, few in this industry or extended space made a single dime on virtual events – they all cost more than they ever made. eg: this was not a replacement for the missing events space income.
#2: Traffic Crash: You can look at the traffic data around some of the services and see that SEL has dropped dramatically in traffic compared to pre-covid.
#3: Danny Sullivan – as far as we know – still owned a portion of ThirdDoorMedia.
- Can we talk about that? A GOOGLER owned a major press publication in our industry. A bit of a glaring conflict of interest don’tcha think?.
- Sullivan, now works in Google Public Relations.
#4: Danny Goodwin is now editor at SearchEngineLand. He was formerly editor at Search Engine Watch (which was previously run by Danny Sullivan and Incisive Media). Before that, Goodwin was editor at SearchEngineJournal, and now editor at SearchEngineLand. Which is good continuity for the community. Whether he sticks is yet to be determined. There’s been a bit of churn at SemRush the last 5-7 years as well.
#5: SMX is a name only. SMX events in Europe and Brazil are run by RisingMedia.com and ThirdDoor has no day-to-day input on the events.
That leaves us with the question, what did SemRush really buy? A potential growth domain, or just a site that is a shell of its former self with a great brand and an events business that doesn’t do events?
Now that it has happened, I really wonder if the fresh bias of an SAS provider trumps the existing bias of a site owned by a Googler?
I think the question of bias is nonsensical. 3RD Door Media was owned inpart by a Googler! If you read SEL for any length of time, you saw story after story that hit before they hit anywhere else. Was Google PR giving preferential treatment to SEL or was it maybe SEL was put at the top of the Google PR speed dial? It sure seemed that way on multiple occasions. If so, that’s biased reporting or influence peddling. If it was all just koshure, then it is nice to have that conflict of interest removed from the equation. It will be interesting to see going forward if SEL will have that kind of continued access to Google PR.
SemRush has taken a strong “hands off” approach to their industry relationships I have seen. I worked with them often at Pubcon. They rarely had specifics requests and never once made me feel they were ‘asking too much’. There was never a question of if they wanted to influence the narrative in any way or form. I’ve heard that same reprieve from other events as well.
I just cant see them digging into the independent reporting of SEL in any meaningful way. Messing with the editorial integrity of SEL would be damaging to a popular brand (which is the whole point in buying them). That’s not to say Joe SEO journalist wont look up and see a SemRush banner Ad on SEL and rewrite that SEO tools story a different way.
In conclusion, meh – it is a push. Wait-n-see.
As the CEO and founder of Pubcon Inc., Brett Tabke has been instrumental in shaping the landscape of online marketing and search engine optimization. His journey in the computer industry has spanned over three decades and has made him a pioneering force behind digital evolution. Full Bio
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