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 don’t think I need to name names – it’s well documented on the socials and the most of them are on my feed and I respect their privacy. These were some of the most respected people in all SEO.
Then, much of the support staff left as well. We can debate and discuss the reasons for that, but suffice to say – it happened. - Then Covid happened. 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.
#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 along with Chris Elwell (former Search Engine Strategies senior director).
- Let that marinate for a minute – A GOOGLER owned a major press publication in our industry. SemRush buying 3rd Door ends this glaring conflict of interest.
- Sullivan, now works in Google Public Relations in a position that could best be described as VP of “I’m Not Matt Cutts”.
#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.
#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 it’s former self with a great brand and an events business that doesn’t put on events?
Now that it has happened, you gotta ask if the fresh bias of SAS trumps the existing bias of a site owned by a Googler?
I think the question of bias is nonsensical. 3RD Door Media was owned 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. So the resolution of that conflict of interest is refreshing in itself.
SemRush has taken a strong “hands off” approach to their industry relationships. 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 they wanted to influence the narrative in any way or form. I’ve heard that same reprieve from other events as well. So I don’t think they will dig into the independent reporting of SEL in any meaningful way.
In conclusion, meh – it’s a push. Wait-n-see.
