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Semrush

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Semrush Holdings, Inc. · www.semrush.com

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Skeptic

Weighted verdict

Knows every vendor claims the largest index and the most accurate rankings, and that no buyer can check either. Reads instead for what can be held to: refresh frequency, stated limits, credit costs per endpoint, and what the invoice does when the team adds a seat.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Skeptic

Crawling & technical audit

How this is scored

Site crawling at real scale: what the crawler finds, how deeply it checks, whether Core Web Vitals and indexation problems are diagnosed rather than merely listed.

0 — No site crawler; the product is keyword data only.

3 — A crawler with a low page cap that reports broken links and missing tags, with no prioritisation and no rendering of JavaScript.

5 — Scheduled crawls at a stated page limit, JavaScript rendering, issue categories with severity, and Core Web Vitals pulled per template.

8 — Log-file or Search Console integration to compare what the crawler sees against what Google fetched, indexation and canonical diagnosis, structured-data validation, and issues prioritised by traffic impact rather than count.

10 — The audit is diagnostic rather than a list: crawl budget analysed, rendering differences surfaced, regressions detected between crawls with the deploy that caused them inferrable, and remediation guidance specific enough for a developer ticket.

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The Skeptic

The audit skill names real modules — crawlability and indexability, canonicals, structured data, mobile parity and rendering, Core Web Vitals judged at Google's own good marks at the 75th percentile — plus a prioritized fix list, and Enterprise mentions multi-million-page crawling. But no crawl page cap is published per plan, and we found no public information on scheduled crawl cadence, log-file comparison against what Google fetched, or regression detection between crawls. 4 2 8

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Keyword research & content guidance

How this is scored

Keyword discovery, intent classification, SERP feature analysis and on-page guidance — judged on the depth of the German-language data as much as the English.

0 — A keyword list with volumes from one source and no intent or difficulty signal.

3 — Volume and difficulty for major markets, with thin or stale German data and no SERP feature detail.

5 — Keyword research with volume, difficulty and intent across German and other EU markets, SERP feature presence, and basic on-page recommendations.

8 — Topic clustering, competitor gap analysis, SERP composition tracked over time, content briefs with entity coverage, and cannibalisation detection.

10 — Research and guidance close the loop: opportunity sized against realistic traffic, content scored against what currently ranks rather than against a keyword density heuristic, and recommendations that reference the specific pages in the customer's own site.

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The Skeptic

Volume, difficulty and CPC with SERP feature presence, a 30-day SERP volatility chart, keyword cannibalization analysis on higher tiers and keyword history back to January 2012 are all documented. We found no public information on intent classification, topic clustering, or the depth of German-language data specifically, which is what I read for here. 6 5 8 2

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Rank tracking & index quality

How this is scored

The proprietary data: ranking accuracy and frequency, backlink index size and freshness. Scored on what the vendor documents about their own data, because nothing here can be verified from outside.

0 — Rankings and backlinks with no stated update frequency, no country or device granularity, and no documentation of how either is collected.

3 — Weekly rankings for one country and device, a backlink index with no stated refresh cadence or size.

5 — Daily rankings with country, language and device selection, local results, and a backlink index with a documented crawl frequency.

8 — Rankings at stated frequency across many locations including city-level, SERP feature attribution, backlink index size and refresh published, lost-and-found link detection, and historical data retained for the life of the account.

10 — The vendor is accountable for their own data: methodology documented, index size and freshness published and updated, historical rankings retained and exportable in full, and discrepancies against Search Console explained rather than hidden.

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The Skeptic

Index size and freshness are published — 26.4 billion keywords, 43 trillion backlinks, daily updates claimed, city-level grids at 1.5 km, monthly snapshots from 2012 — which is more accountability than most vendors offer. But we found no public information on collection methodology, lost-and-found link detection, or whether a customer's own tracking history is retained and exportable for the life of the account. 9 6 8 5 7

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Reporting, integrations & API

How this is scored

Getting the data out and in front of someone: dashboards, white-label reporting for agencies, Search Console and analytics integration, and an API a team can build on.

0 — On-screen views only; export is a manual CSV and there is no API.

3 — Scheduled PDF reports and CSV export, one analytics integration, no API worth building against.

5 — Customisable dashboards, scheduled reports, Search Console and analytics integration, and a documented API with stated limits.

8 — White-label reporting with client access, data-warehouse or BigQuery export, multi-site and multi-client management, and an API with credit costs published per endpoint.

10 — The tool is a data source rather than a destination: full historical export in open formats, a versioned API with a deprecation policy, integrations the vendor maintains, and reporting an agency can hand a client unedited.

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The Skeptic

API v3 and v4 are documented with a checkable unit balance and per-endpoint costs shown where it counts — 20 API units per request on keyword metrics, a points-times-keywords credit formula on Map Rank Tracker, some methods consuming none. White-label reporting exists only as a paid add-on at €19.18/mo, tools with external users are routed to sales, and we found no public information on data-warehouse or BigQuery export. 10 5 7 2

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Data portability & exit

How this is scored

Whether the ranking and crawl history — the only thing a multi-year subscription actually accumulates — remains the customer's when they leave.

0 — No bulk export; history is visible in the interface and nowhere else, and ends with the subscription.

3 — CSV export of current views only, with historical data capped or unavailable in bulk.

5 — Bulk export of rankings, keywords and crawl results including history, via interface or API.

8 — Complete historical export in open formats without credit metering that prices it out of reach, plus a documented retention period after cancellation.

10 — Exit is designed for: the full account exportable including every historical data point, API access sufficient to mirror the data continuously, and a stated grace period during which the archive remains retrievable.

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The Skeptic

The terms commit to erasure no sooner than thirty days after termination, give a 30-day backup window after suspension, and API responses come in json or csv with read-only access to crawl snapshots. But API use is restricted to internal business purposes, caching beyond one month requires written consent, export consumes metered units, and we found no public information on bulk export of a customer's ranking and crawl history in open formats. 11 5 4

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where the account and crawl data live and who the contracting entity is. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; weighted lower here than in categories holding personal data, because an SEO tool mostly holds the customer's own strategy rather than their customers' identities.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated, subprocessors unnamed, and site or user data of unclear scope leaving the EU.

3 — EU hosting offered as an option while the contracting entity is non-EU, or the subprocessor list is absent.

5 — EU hosting as standard and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, subprocessor list published, and any analytics or Search Console data handling described with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, entity, hosting and every subprocessor European, certification published, and a DPA that covers the crawl and analytics data the tool ingests.

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The Skeptic

The contracting entity is Semrush Inc., a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Boston, personal data may be transferred to the United States under Standard Contractual Clauses, hosting is unstated and the subprocessor list is absent. A Prague entity appears as joint controller, but we found no public information on any EU hosting option. 11 3

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

The category where the headline price is least often the invoice. Whether a buyer can compute the real annual cost including keyword limits, crawl credits, API units, extra users and client seats — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A monthly headline exists, but keyword limits, crawl credits or the cost of an additional user are unstated — the invoice is unknowable.

5 — Tier prices public with the main limits given, but at least one commonly needed piece (extra seats, API credits, historical data) is unpriced or metered opaquely.

8 — Every tier priced publicly with keyword, crawl and API limits, overage rates, per-seat costs, minimum term and VAT treatment stated.

10 — Complete price computability: annual invoice derivable for a given keyword count, crawl volume, API usage and team size, with overage and every credit cost published.

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The Skeptic

Tier limits are public — 5 to 40 websites and 500 to 5,000 keywords tracked daily — and the add-ons carry exact figures (users "Starting at €43/mo", Base Report €9.59/mo, Pro Report €19.18/mo). But the captured pages give no base subscription price per tier, no crawl page caps, no overage rate and no cash price for an API unit, while fees are exclusive of taxes and an unused trial auto-charges. 2 5 7 11

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (12)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 11 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +3 earlier captures: 11 Sep 2026, 2 Sep 2026, 2 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Crawling & technical audit — found from sitemap www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Keyword research & content guidance — found from sitemap developer.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Keyword research & content guidance — found from sitemap www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Rank tracking & index quality — found from sitemap developer.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Rank tracking & index quality — found from sitemap www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Reporting, integrations & API — found from sitemap developer.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Reporting, integrations & API — found from sitemap www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Data portability & exit — found from sitemap www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Data portability & exit — found from sitemap www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →