Search Theory^® Named A Finalist For Best Start-Up Agency At The UK Search Awards

Search Theory has been shortlisted for Best Start-Up Agency at the UK Search Awards 2026. We opened our doors in April 2026. Six months from launch to an awards shortlist still feels slightly unreal to type and my mind is blown that we’ve come this far this quickly.

The winners are announced on Wednesday 25 November at the Troxy in London. The awards are in their 17th year and cover more than 80 categories, all judged independently by senior people from across search. Sitting on that list next to agencies with years of work behind them means a lot to a team that had no track record at all in the spring.

So before we start ironing shirts for November, I want to look back at how we got here.

Why we started Search Theory

Sara and I launched Search Theory in April 2026. Between us we’d spent years inside Manchester agencies, and we kept running into the same frustration. Too much of the industry had settled for templated strategies, average content, padded reports and, more recently, whatever an AI tool produced first.

I think it’s fair to say that we were also tired of people being put last – the people who get results for the clients. Both of us have a fundamental understanding that great agencies are defined by great people and teams, not who has the shiniest things or the better processes. Although those things do help, we have both.

Search used to be about curiosity. You’d form a theory, test it, read the data properly and keep what worked. We wanted an agency that still works that way, where senior specialists do the work and explain the results in plain English to whoever signs off the budget.

I started in digital marketing at 17 and made my way up to CEO at age 30. Sara was also a director of SEO before we set this up. We knew the theory (sorry). What we didn’t know was whether brands would trust a brand-new agency in an already crowded market.

They did. Prolific North covered our launch on 13 April, just before we headed to BrightonSEO to introduce ourselves to the industry, and the enquiries started coming in droves thanks to our brilliant marketing, PR and outreach efforts.

Six months, month by month

Six months goes quickly when you’re building something from scratch. This is the short version.

We now work with nine clients. Nine clients in six months!! For an agency with humble beginnings, it has surprised a lot of people we respect in this industry. It surprised us too, if I’m honest. And I still pinch myself that we’re at the stage we’re at today.

Proof of the theory

Signing clients is great. Watching them renew is better, and that’s the part of the last six months I’m proudest of.

The Street Food Company has signed on with us for another six months. Simon Charles extended for a further three months after we presented our first quarter of results. This month we also signed two new retainers, and our pipeline is fuller than it’s ever been. I have joked about doing a waitlist for the agency, and we might actually have to create one.

The results we have posted recently on our case studies page stand out too.

For Mowgli Street Food, bookings coming from LLMs grew by 1,185% in six months, and online bookings from search results rose by 23%.

For luxury travel brand Bookings For You, AI citations rose by 241% over the same period, while booking interest from organic search climbed 143%.

Numbers like that come from getting the basics right first and then testing everything on top. Which leads nicely into how we work.

How we actually work

Our homepage, and everywhere on our socials, says ‘we engineer predictable search ROI’. That’s a big claim, so it’s fair to ask what it means in simple terms.

We test things before we sell them. Travis Robbins, our SEO and Experiences Manager, has been running search experiments to see how AI assistants read and act on websites. He’s also built reporting and upload connectors that automate the admin tasks like data collection or uploads. Now the team spends more time on strategy and writing informative content and less time copying numbers into spreadsheets or uploading work onto sites.

We’ll say the unpopular thing when the evidence backs it up. We’ve been vocal that a lot of what’s being sold as GEO is good SEO with a new badge on it, and we wrote about why. AI search clearly matters to our clients and the industry as a whole, hence the whole acronym frenzy that’s been going on. Winning it still comes down to solid technical SEO and content worth citing.

We also talk about money in the language finance teams use. At MeasureFest at BrightonSEO this month, I gave a talk on how to get SEO budget signed off. It walks through a simple model with five inputs: demand, capture, conversion, value and ramp. Multiply them together and you get a forecast a finance director can actually interrogate. The slides and the spreadsheet are free to download if you want to run it on your own numbers.

And senior specialists run every account, as standard. There are no sales managers to hide behind or juniors left to work it out alone. That matters most to us, as we know a lot of agencies (too many, unfortunately) give ambitious clients junior talent.

That’s not to say there’s something wrong with junior people coming into the industry, it just isn’t fair to place them on client accounts where the pressure of performance is super high. For us, any junior should be learning, not implementing high stakes strategies for brands who NEED to deliver. That’s another thing Search Theory is doing differently.

Mission Control is open and thriving

Search Theory started as two people. There are now six of us, and Sara is now hiring a Senior SEO Executive to start in January 2027, so take a look! We did update our Meet the Team page, but here’s a list of the geniuses behind the award nomination:

• David Vernon, CEO and Co-Founder
• Sara Kavanagh, MD and Co-Founder
• Courtney Scrivens, Head of Paid Media
• Samantha Cobden, Head of Digital PR
• Travis Robbins, SEO and Experiences Manager
• Elisha Vernon, Senior Digital Marketing Executive

You may have noticed that Henry Reeves isn’t on this list as he also joined Search Theory early days – and that’s because our inspiring digital marketing apprentice has decided to go to university, so we’ve all congratulated him and set him free. I still believe he just wants an excuse to get drunk every week. But in all seriousness, good luck Henry!

We’ve also opened a brand new Manchester office at Lloyds House on Lloyd Street, alongside our base in Cheltenham. It now has plants, lava lamps (they’re making a comeback I’m told – so shoutout to Mathmos), and proper furniture. I think it’s safe to say that we’re a ‘real’ agency now, if that’s a thing?

Celebrating the nomination for ‘Best Start-Up Agency’

This shortlisting belongs to the team. A special thank you to Sam Cobden, our Head of Digital PR, who worked incredibly hard to get us nominated. Thank you to Sara, Courtney, Travis and Elisha for six months of proper graft. You’ve made a brand-new agency run like one that’s been going for years.

And thank you to our clients. It’s been so amazing working with all of you – and I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year and 2027 has in store for all of us. I have a feeling it’s going to be incredible.

What happens next

Search Theory has only just got going. We’ve hit every growth target we set ourselves in April 2026, and Sara and I are already working on our strategic plans for 2027. If you’re a curious SEO who likes testing things properly, take a look at the Senior SEO Executive role on our careers page.

On 25 November we’ll be at the Troxy, cheering on every agency on the shortlist (and ourselves, a bit louder). Win or lose, we’ll be back at our desks the next morning. Probably a little later than usual and slightly hungover.

If you want a search partner that tests everything and reports honestly, get in touch. We’ll start with a free SEO audit and give you a straight answer on where you stand. Mission Control is ready when you are.

David Vernon, CEO and Co-Founder, Search Theory