Digital marketing agency NP Digital announced today that it has acquired AnswerThePublic, a popular freemium keyword research tool. Terms of the deal were not revealed.  

NP Digital, which was co-founded by marketing influencer and entrepreneur Neil Patel, is also the owner of another popular freemium keyword research tool, UberSuggest. 

What this means for AnswerThePublic users. All the tool’s existing features will remain. Users can continue to access the tool via its website or app. 

There are a couple of noticeable changes so far, including the addition of “by UberSuggest” under AnswerThePublic’s logo in the main navigation and Patel’s face on a dancing robot’s body on the homepage.

AnswerThePublic has approximately 1 million monthly users and has been a favorite among search marketers for years. NP Digital said it is working on new free features for marketers. 

However, the tool hasn’t gotten any significant updates or improvements lately. That’s because the owners weren’t focusing on it (they had another software company). 

What it means for UberSuggest users. UberSuggest has approximately 1 million monthly users. Those users will now be able to access the features and data through either platform. Users can soon expect to see new features related to keyword visualizations.

NP Digital said Ubersuggest now spans over 30 billion keywords and 50 trillion backlinks across 249 countries. 

Why NP Digital acquired AnswerthePublic. Both platforms leverage the same data sets. But each had its unique features, functions and visualizations. 

NP Digital CEO Mike Gullaksen told me: “This platform allows marketers to leverage the data from the largest focus group in the world – Google search users. Being able to mine massive data sets to identify consumer interest around needs and wants is one of the most powerful yet underused strategies for content and search marketers. Layering on top of these data insights allows marketers to both look back and see real-time trends with powerful visualizations and quickly move their content initiatives forward while staying on the pulse of the consumer mindset.”

Why we care. NP Digital says this acquisition will mean more new free capabilities for both platforms – and that you can access these insights from either platform. So both tools will continue to help marketers find inspiration and insights that can help shape SEO and content marketing strategies. 

A year of acquisitions. This has been a big year of change in the SEO tools space and we’re not even halfway through 2022. Below are links to coverage of the other big acquisitions we’ve seen so far:

• Jan. 20: Semrush acquires Backlinko
• Feb. 16: Conductor acquires ContentKing
• Feb. 23: BrightEdge acquires Oncrawl
• March 2: Semrush acquires Kompyte
• May 16: Similarweb acquires Rank Ranger (press release)