Founding History and Early Evolution Semrush was founded in 2008 by two self-described “enthusiastic nerds,” Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitri Melnikov (wikipedia). The duo’s journey began even earlier: they started experimenting with search engine optimization (SEO) around 2000 and developed a popular browser extension called SEOquake in 2006 (werockyourweb, werockyourweb)