SE Ranking acquires Planable to help brands stay visible in the AI search era
In this very special post on the SE Ranking blog, I’m thrilled to announce that we’ve acquired Planable—a social-media management platform trusted by more than 7,000 brands and agencies. After 12 years of innovation, SE Ranking has become a multi-product platform that will help marketers stay on top of AI shifts.
Search is fragmenting fast, and SE Ranking’s mission is to keep your brand visible wherever people—and AI agents—look. Partnering with Planable, together with our commitment to rapidly evolve our AI Search toolkit, moves SE Ranking several steps closer to that goal.
Why social media?
A top-3 blue link on Google used to feel like winning. Today, winning means ranking in the top-3 and also showing up in AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT and Perplexity answers, getting recommended by YouTube and having your YouTube videos right in the SERP along with Instagram posts and LinkedIn snippets.
- Since July 10, 2025, Google has begun indexing public Instagram posts, captions, images, and Reels, putting social content directly on the main SERP.
- In our recent study of 2,000 AI responses, YouTube was the #1 linked source across ChatGPT (11.3 %), Perplexity (11.11 %), and Google AI Overviews (6.31 %). LinkedIn also cracks Google’s top-10, while TikTok feeds ChatGPT’s models.
- LLM search itself is exploding: according to our recent research, the amount of traffic websites get from ChatGPT and Perplexity grew six times since 2024. In the same period, the amount of desktop visits to AI tools in the US tripled.
The takeaway is clear: SEO and social media are no longer silos. If your videos, posts, and conversations aren’t crawlable — or worse, tell a fragmented story — AI assistants will spread that fragmentation for you.
The fix? Making your SEO and social teams work together, shaping the same narrative and delivering it to both users and AI agents. That’s exactly what hundreds of users who chose both SE Ranking and Planable have been doing for months. Yes, we eventually figured out we already have many loyal customers using both our products.
Why Planable?
We could have spun up an in-house social module. We chose not to — and here’s why:
- Proven product & team – Planable’s nine-platform calendar, real-time collaboration, and approval flows already power millions of posts.
- Cultural fit – Both Planable and SE Ranking are product-led, people-first, and obsessed with usability on the surface, power under the hood.
- Speed to value – By partnering with professionals who live and breathe social, we can deliver integrated workflows to you in months, not years.
SE Ranking was looking for a partner with social media expertise that matched our own vast SEO knowledge. Someone who already earned the community’s trust; someone ready to innovate to be at the forefront of marketing. Planable ticked every box.
As Planable Co-Founder Xenia Muntean puts it:
What changes for you (right now and next)?
SE Ranking and Planable mission and vision are already perfectly aligned with no efforts on our side🎉 We’ll keep developing both products as planned, pooling our resources for research and development.
- Expect no disruption to your existing projects. Your SE Ranking dashboards and Planable workspaces keep running as usual.
- It’s your chance to create SEO and social synergy early on. Regular Google search still dominates, and you still get clicks to your blue links, but to future-proof your strategy, you need to start optimizing for AI search now. SE Ranking is here to support you at every step, offering integrated solutions for AI search and bridging the gap between SEO and SMM—crucial in today’s AI-driven landscape.
- Get access to Planable with a 30% discount. Your special discount is already waiting in your SE Ranking account along with a link to the Planable platform for easy access.
And yes, this is only the first step. Expect seamless single sign-on experience, cross-channel dashboards, and more.
As SE Ranking is evolving into a multi-product ecosystem built for the era of AI-driven search, there will be more smart additions that help you control your story wherever it surfaces on the internet.
A final thank-you
To our amazing user community: thank you for challenging us to see beyond keywords and backlinks. Your feedback shaped this decision, and your success will shape what comes next.
On behalf of all of us at SE Ranking and our new teammates at Planable, we can’t wait to help you stay visible—and unforgettable —in every corner of tomorrow’s search landscape.
