Chris Donnelly

Co-Founder Searchable, Lottie, Verb Brands and The Creator Accelerator. Get a free Visibility Report using the link below.

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

Excited to announce that Searchable has raised $4 million in pre-seed funding at a $40 million valuation! 👇

For an idea I had only 4 months ago. We launched 12 days ago.

Fundamentally, AI is changing marketing faster than Google did.

Now, if you’re not indexing within AI search engines, you are going to lose out.

There are 700 million monthly users on ChatGPT.
450 million on Google Gemini.
30 million for Perplexity and Claude.

This is a real consumer behavioural shift, and we’re right at the beginning of it.

Even if you think Google are going to win, the interface will be different forever.

I truly believe what we’re building is the best tool on the market.

With the best team behind it to grow it into what I think could be a billion-dollar business.

I met my Co-Founders Sam Hogan and Arya Nagabhyru merely a few months ago.

They were both deep AI engineers building in the AI agent space at YC companies.

We jammed on the idea non stop and eventually landed on a massively improved version of what I had brought to them.

Since then, I’ve moved them to our London office, hired some more incredible talent, and hit some insane revenue figures already.

This is predicted to become a multi-billion-dollar market by 2030. The opportunity is massive.

In 2012, £10 in Facebook spend could return hundreds because no one else was doing it.

That same window exists now, for brands that learn to be visible to AI.

I’ve never worked with more talented people (we’re also hiring, check out our website for details

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

Around 80% of winning in AI search is just SEO done properly.

But the discovery route has changed completely, and most businesses are still optimising for a journey their customers stopped taking.

Use this post to reframe how you think about it first.

Then, grab a free AI Visibility Report to see exactly where your brand appears across every major AI platform right now, and where you're invisible.

📌 Claim yours here: https://t.co/xEzrFWehgM

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

People think SEO is just "ranking on Google."

But that's just one of many, many pieces...

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

WHERE YOU SHOW UP 🔍

• Which platforms your buyers actually search (Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini)
• What questions they ask right before they buy
• Whether AI even recognises your brand as a real entity
• Which sources those AI answers are pulling from
• Where your competitors are being cited, and you're not
• What your buyers see when they search your category
• Whether your content is structured for a machine to quote

HOW YOU GET CHOSEN 🏆

• How to earn citations + ranking
• How to build third-party coverage that AI actually trusts
• Which comparison and review pages you need to own
• How to structure pages so answers get lifted cleanly
• What original data only you can bring to the table
• How to track your visibility as it shifts week to week
• What to fix first when everything looks urgent

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

Led by Alex and Zack, the company grew incredibly well, reaching millions in revenue while helping brands and agencies drive their AEO. Congratulations on building the company and on the successful exit! For all Meridian customers, this is about accelerating what you're already doing and giving you more.

Searchable opened a U.S. office only two months ago and has already onboarded over 200 new brands and agencies across America. Therefore, the Meridian acquisition will strengthen our U.S. presence as we look to scale rapidly this year.

American brands are some of the furthest ahead in the AI visibility race, and therefore Meridian brings us a strong base of businesses that want to push their AEO strategy even further.

Searchable reached $5 million ARR in its 9th month, and we're now looking to continue that growth across the US and the rest of the world.

It feels like an important milestone for us - we are only 9 months live, and we are already making moves like this, which shows you how quickly this category is taking shape.

For the full press release, you can read it here: https://t.co/kfSJv7l6yr

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

Huge news: Searchable has acquired Meridian.

Meridian is an established AI Search optimisation platform based in NYC.

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

Cohort 5 starts September 22.

It's capped at 50 agencies, and applications close September 18.

If you're serious about turning AI search into your next revenue stream, this is where to start.

📌 Apply here: https://t.co/sf3XtlxmyI

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

Every agency owner I speak to is hearing the same thing from clients right now.

"What's our AI search strategy?"

And most of them don't have a real answer yet.

They've built their business on SEO.... They're good at it.

But clients are asking about ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini every single week now, and "we're looking into it" doesn't hold a retainer for long.

The reality is this:

The agencies with a genuine AI search offer are winning new business and expanding existing accounts.

The ones without one are watching clients drift to competitors who can answer the question.

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

The Agency Track is five weeks of hands-on work building AI search into a service you can actually sell:

Weeks 1-2: Learn how AI search works and run a real audit on a live client account.

Weeks 3-5: Package it into an offer, price it properly, build your delivery process, and create the reporting that proves results to clients.

You get weekly live workshops, live Q&A with our team, hands-on assignments inside Searchable, and a full framework to take to market.

Agencies including VaynerMedia, Merkle, and Propellernet have already been through it.

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

You can find even more details on my speaker page: https://t.co/5GfeW46WbU

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

Happy to announce I'm speaking at BrightonSEO in San Diego !

I'll be there with @Searchable on September 15-16th.

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

My talk specifically is titled:

"Seen, but not cited: What a billion sources say about your brand”

I will be sharing everything I've learned from analysing over a billion sources and citations inside our own Searchable database to understand how AEO actually works.

Because every AI citation comes down to two things: owned media (pages you publish) and earned media (third parties citing you).

But different answer engines rely on different parts of the web, and the sources that matter also change by industry.

My talk will aim to break down the rules behind this and the repeatable plays that brands can use to win more citations.

This will be based on working with 1000s of brands and agencies at Searchable.

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

Exciting news: Searchable is coming to BrightonSEO in San Diego !

We will be there on September 15-16th.

BrightonSEO San Diego brings together 3,000+ SEO, PPC and digital marketing professionals, with 150+ talks covering SEO, AI search, content, digital PR, PPC, paid social and analytics.

I'll be doing a talk titled "Seen, but not cited" - and I'll share more on that in the coming days.

We will also have our own booth, as you can see in the video below !

Come to Booth 86 where we'll be unveiling a new concept that changes how companies think about prompts.

We will run an experiment live with you to uncover where the demand for your business actually lives in AI.

The website to sign up is here: https://t.co/kxN9q5mCUz

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

This is the reality brands are navigating right now.

Those that optimise for AI search will own their categories.

Everyone else will be playing catch-up.

Have you started preparing for the new era of search?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

If you want the easiest way to prepare for AI search,

Try Searchable for free.

It analyses and fixes your content across all touchpoints: https://t.co/VQ8jxp1Zxb

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

It's 2026, and the language of search has changed.

Dominate your niche in 15 phrases 👇

These aren't just powerful for ranking in Google.

They are essential for getting discovered, cited, and trusted in AI-powered search.

Save this post and pin it somewhere your team will see it every day.

Here are the 15 phrases defining SEO in 2026:

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

Want to see where your brand stands across AI search?

📌 Get your free AI visibility report here: https://t.co/iQLasOV43D

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

ChatGPT just cut its use of Reddit by 83%.

Meanwhile, every other major AI platform did the exact opposite.

[Chris Donnelly @donnellycss]

So while Reddit is clearly still relevant for AI search...

Something has changed specifically in ChatGPT.

And when we looked closer, it got even more interesting.

For prompts that previously relied on Reddit, the average number of sources per answer fell from 26.2 to 21.8.

ChatGPT didn't just replace Reddit with another source.

The sites gaining visibility absorbed only a small fraction of what Reddit lost.

And Reddit wasn't the only platform hit with this.

arXiv also collapsed even though it's open access and doesn't block OpenAI’s crawlers.

Several major news domains fell around the same time too.

We can't say precisely what changed inside ChatGPT.

But we can see the impact it's having.