Acquiring Searchmetrics: From Fierce Competitors to a Global Leader

Conductor's acquisition of Searchmetrics enables the enterprise SEO platform to provide even more value to customers.

Life is long. Your last canceled customer could be your biggest customer down the line. A former employee could be your next partner. And your competitor could become part of your team someday. It highlights the importance of doing things the right way—with honor, respect, and values—throughout the journey (and also the magic of business). That is exactly what happened here…

For years, we’ve been fiercely fighting to realize our vision of Conductor as the #1 global SEO and organic marketing solution for enterprise brands. Our vision fuels us; it’s why we come to work every day, why we invest every dollar back into our business, and why we work tirelessly to keep improving for our customers. Today, we take yet another proud step on the journey of our vision, welcoming our former competitor, European-based Searchmetrics, to Conductor. This acquisition is a landmark moment for our industry—all in the spirit of delivering for customers.

First competitors, now teammates

In our years of competing with Searchmetrics, we have always respected and admired them. Beyond their inspiring thought leadership and impressive technical expertise, the team at Searchmetrics have made it their chief mission to build a great product for customers. Now, as we move forward together, we look to build upon these efforts and cement Conductor as the leading unified, global SEO and organic marketing platform for enterprise brands. Searchmetrics brings a fantastic European support team, unique data assets, over 500 global customers, and 70 amazing new team members to Conductor.

Last year, we acquired ContentKing to bring critical real-time auditing capabilities into our platform (this integration is well on its way). Now, we’ll have the opportunity to introduce this game-changing product integration to hundreds of new European customers via our acquisition of Searchmetrics.

Accelerating customer value with Searchmetrics

We are entering the golden age of digital marketing. Every day, we see people increasingly turn to search engines for help with their problems—and SEO has become an imperative. Companies must now help their customers before they become customers. Today’s digital marketing leaders need the absolute best platform to achieve this, which is why we make product our #1 investment area at Conductor and continue to look for opportunities to deliver even more to our customers. We’re always asking ourselves: Is there a way to do more? Solve more problems? Provide more support? Build the features customers want faster?

With the acquisition of Searchmetrics, Conductor is able to answer yes to every one of those questions and deliver more to our customers, faster.

Following this acquisition, we will immediately increase investments in our product and customer experience, benefitting both Conductor and Searchmetrics customers in the following ways:

• For Searchmetrics customers: In the short term, customers will benefit from Conductor’s additional resources, along with continued access to their current support teams. In the long term, our aim is to bring the best of Searchmetrics product and support over to Conductor’s platform to deliver significantly more value for each of their customer’s existing investment.
• For Conductor customers: In addition to accelerating our product roadmap and adding more data capabilities, this acquisition will increase the quality of our global support, with access to extended support staff in 10+ languages via our new office in Berlin.
• In the long term, for all customers: The Searchmetrics development team will join Conductors to accelerate our vast product strategy, while also adding over 10 years of data indexes.

We will continue to invest every dollar we collect from customers back into the business, cementing Conductor as the top-invested technology company in our space. While our competitors play the short game—focusing on their bottom lines or growing their sales team—we will continue to build value for customers. Because customer value is our only success metric.

Always play the long game… always.

Many of you know that Searchmetrics has faced unique challenges along the way, specifically a patent lawsuit with a competitor, which diverted significant engineering investment to legal fees. While this put a dent in their momentum and growth, their spirit to persevere remains strong. Last week, when I met with the Searchmetrics team in Berlin, I was blown away by their energy and enthusiasm. Like the incredible people behind Conductor, in the face of mounting challenges, the Searchmetrics team has continued to play the long game and focus on their customers; it’s the reason they have maintained a strong reputation, especially in the European community, and have so many loyal customers today.

For Conductor, we have consistently grown the business while demonstrating our values to our employees, customers, and the industry as a whole. This reputation created the opportunity to make this transaction possible. Searchmetrics wanted to join our team and establish Conductor as the global SEO leader. The long game is the only game!

Our commitment to our customers is stronger than ever. We are so excited to welcome Searchmetrics customers and employees to Conductor. Thank you to all of our combined customers for their continued support— we can’t wait to deliver even more for you. More to come!