Search Engine Land Awards 2026: Complete finalists list

ATRA leads the field of finalists for the 12th annual Search Engine Land Awards. The agency earned finalist spots in six categories in 2026, more than any other agency.

ATRA’s eight finalist entries span six PPC categories, including Best Overall PPC Initiative – Small Business, Best Overall PPC Initiative – Enterprise, and Small Agency of the Year – PPC, where it has three entries competing.

Five other agencies earned finalist status in three categories:

• ANGA Bangkok.
• Blackbird PPC.
• NP Digital.
• Searchbloom.
• Stella Rising.

Meanwhile, several agencies and brands earned finalist spots in two categories, including:

• Belron Canada.
• Digital Hitmen.
• Eight Oh Two.
• IKEA Thailand.
• Ignite Visibility.
• LOCALiQ.
• Monks.

Competition was once again fierce across all 18 categories, with finalists showcasing impressive results in SEO, PPC, AI-powered search marketing, and omnichannel campaigns.

All the winners of the 2026 Search Engine Land Awards will be revealed next Monday, Oct. 26.

Meet Search Engine Land 2026 award winners at SMX Next

As has become tradition, we’re bringing some of this year’s award winners to SMX Next on Nov. 18 to answer your questions during two “Ask the Search Engine Land Award winners” panels. I’ll host the SEO winners session, while Search Engine Land’s Paid Media Editor Anu Adegbola will lead the PPC winners discussion.

• If you haven’t yet, make sure to register for free for SMX Next.

The full list of finalists

Best Use Of AI Technology In Search Marketing

• The $17 AI Search Transformation: How Ignite Visibility & Best Pick Reports Engineered +96% Organic Lead Growth From a Declining SEO Channel
• Milan Novotný & CloudTalk: 65% More Organic Revenue From 59% Less Google Traffic, With AI Doing Three Jobs
• How Milestone AI Visibility Flywheel Unified GEO, Content, Schema, Local, CMS, and AI Agents to Drive Measurable Search Growth
• How Outshine‘s custom MCP and supporting paid search intelligence layer helped Airbyte see 2.4x improvement in ROAS
• Solving a $24M Enterprise SEM Budgeting Challenge with AI (Thermo Fisher Scientific)

Best Overall PPC Initiative – Small Business

• ATRA & Medical Monks: Profit-Led Paid Media Strategy
• How Eight Oh Two Doubled Viking Culinary‘s Revenue by Building Search Demand Where None Existed
• Art and Science: How Jordan Digital Marketing Leveraged Data Integration and Outside-the-Box Creative to Grow FloatMe’s New Users by 71% with 38% Reduced CPA
• Nautica Charters — Navigating a New Course: From Third-Party Reliance to 20.9× ROAS
• Cost Per Signed Case, Not Cost Per Lead: How Searchbloom Turned $951,360 Into $4.42M in Signed Matter Value, Starting in Punchwork Law‘s First Year in Business

Best Overall PPC Initiative – Enterprise

• ATRA & Medical Guardian: Scaling Enterprise Paid Search Through Data-Driven Optimization
• Blackbird PPC & Millboard: 719% Pipeline Increase on a 30% Smaller Budget
• Client x Agency x Platform (Coursera x Monks x Google) Collaboration to drive new-customer acquisition in international markets.
• How a Custom-Built Revenue Attribution Engine Drove 32.73% Revenue Growth, 18% More Qualified Leads, and Lower Spend Across an Enterprise PPC Portfolio (Ignite Visibility)
• Turning data into smarter paid search investment across 50+ brands (TurnPoint Services & Jellyfish)

Best Commerce Search Marketing Initiative – PPC

• ATRA & Medical Guardian: Driving Record Ecommerce Sales Through Smarter Commerce PPC
• Driving Conversions at Scale: How Belron Canada Used AI-Powered Search to Redefine Efficiency in Auto Glass
• How Eight Oh Two Engineered a $10.5M Customer Growth Program for Pure Hockey
• How IKEA Thailand Grew Digital Revenue by 43.5% Without Spending More Budget
• Growth in full bloom. (NP Digital & FiftyFlowers)

Best Local Search Marketing Initiative – PPC

• How Amsive Turned National Buzz into 6,100 Local Restaurant Visits for Golden Krust
• ATRA & Science Care: Modernizing Search Localization in an Automated PPC Landscape
• Closer to Convert: How Belron Canada Turned Proximity Into Performance Through Local Search
• Matching Local Demand to Real-Time Capacity: How Bonfe Achieved 8.9X ROAS (CAMP Digital)
• How IKEA Thailand Grew Digital Revenue by 43.5% Without Spending More Budget

Best B2B Search Marketing Initiative – PPC

• ATRA & Jitasa Group: Identifying the Search Behaviors Behind 44% Revenue Growth
• Blackbird PPC’s pipeline-focused rebuild of 11x’s paid program: qualified demo volume increased 138% with a 33% reduction in cost per qualified demo
• How Compound Growth Marketing Drove a 58% Increase in Pipeline for CyberArk, a Palo Alto Networks company, In A Competitive Category
• Pearmill & Vori: Replacing Maximize Clicks With a Five-Stage Value Ladder to Triple Demo Bookings at 27% Lower Cost, and Unlock 4.6x Spend Growth

Best Integration Of Search Into Omnichannel Marketing

• The Delta Opportunity Index: Data-Driven Seasonality Meets Search-First Integration at Croix Bleue
• How LOCALiQ integrated search, social, Digital PR and local media to generate nearly 25,000 leads for Cut & Craft and Lucia
• Full funnel investment across YouTube and Social drives incremental growth. (Monks)
• Creating demand in a zero-click world. (NP Digital & DHL Express)
• Seven Months to a 14x: How Stella Rising Proved Video Drives Search for L’Occitane, Then Built a Campaign on the Proof

Best Overall SEO Initiative – Small Business

• Digital Hitmen & Jaram Australia: Engineering a 958% Revenue Growth Through Search
• From Pawnshop to Trusted Lender: The AI Citation-First SEO Transformation of Easy Money
• Honest Digital: Tripling Inventory Visibility in Modern Search
• How SUSO Digital delivered scalable organic search demand for a health coaching brand from near-zero visibility
• Beyond Rankings: How VICO Turned Search Into a B2B Growth Engine for Southeast Asian Logistics

Best Overall SEO Initiative – Enterprise

• How Collective Measures Helped Room & Board Grow Organic Revenue 55% By Reinventing SEO For The AI Era
• How Nestlé Purina Europe grew AI presence by 41% and citations by 174% with Project Torch
• How Reflect Digital drove an estimated $10M and an ROI of 7,146% for Nord Anglia.
• Winning SEO Migrations at Scale with Python, Machine Learning & LLMs (RS Components)
• The scorecard that caught what clicks missed (Zendesk)

Best Commerce Search Marketing Initiative – SEO

• How a Local Thai Brand Won the Search War Against Global Competitors (Case Club & ANGA Bangkok)
• How Break The Web Helped VIM & VIGR Blow the Socks Off Search With 60% YoY Organic Revenue Growth
• Hobbies Direct: Owning the Long Tail for $2.65M in Organic Revenue
• Online Marketing Gurus & Intersport: Search That Scored at Checkout
• 74% of New Clicks Non-Brand, Organic Revenue Up 69.3%: How Searchbloom Rebuilt MJ Arsenal‘s Collection Pages at 679% ROI

Best Local Search Marketing Initiative – SEO

• Selling Direct. How Andamanda Phuket Turned Local Search into USD 419,000 in Direct Ticket Revenue at a 9.2:1 Return
• Fewer Pages, More Patients: The Radical SEO Pivot That Amplified AVC’s Physician Network and Drove a 31% Lead Surge (VML / Azura Vascular Care)
• How Digital Hitmen Helped For Eyes Optometrist Outfocus and Outrank National Optometry Chains
• 127,738 Directions and 39,387 Calls to a Sun & Ski Store: How Searchbloom Grew Local Search Actions 25% Across 32 Locations by Making Every Location Unique
• How Spearlance Drove 97% More Non-Branded Local Clicks, 43% More Patient Inquiries and 6 Clinical Hires Through Google Search for Progressive Pediatric Therapy

Best B2B Search Marketing Initiative – SEO

• How a Thai SME Use Twin Domains to Outranked National Retail Chains (ANGA Bangkok & Alusite)
• How Deposco’s in-house team grew B2B pipeline 32% by replacing the traffic playbook with an ICP-intent framework
• Intent, Architecture, Authority: The SEO System Behind Kenco‘s 144% Year-Over-Year Organic Growth (Logical Position)
• How Novalab Turned 817 De-Indexed Pages Into 6x Search Visibility and $842K in Revenue for Screendragon
• How Stratabeat Fueled Record Leads and Pipeline for LBMC

Agency Of The Year – PPC

• How ADSQUIRE Delivered A 8,000% ROI For Their Client In One Month
• ‘+245% CTR. 200% Sales Growth. One Integrated Search Team. Fully Connected (ANGA Bangkok)
• How LOCALiQ increased paid-search leads by 203% for The Cut & Craft Manchester while cutting CPC by 57%
• How Ruby Digital Delivered 106.4% Conversion Growth for Gelmar via PPC
• Spend Right, Not Spend More: How Stella Rising Rebuilt Paid Search Around Incrementality

Agency Of The Year – SEO

• Grounds for a Comeback: Reversing a Double-Digit Revenue Decline for Stumptown Coffee Roasters (Mad Fish Digital)
• From Search Rankings to AI Shortlists: How Marcel Digital Grew Visibility and MQLs for a B2B SaaS Company
• Proving the ROI of SEO. (NP Digital & US Claims)
• Scaling FAQ Content for Millions of Pages: How Previsible and Etsy Engineered AI Content Agents to Drive a 3% Lift in Visits
• The Quarter Million-Dollar Wake-Up Call: How Stella Rising Rebuilt SEO for the AI Era

In-House Team Of The Year – SEO

• DiscoverCars.com Strategic Shift to an AI-driven search
• From Forgotten to Integrated: How Network Solutions SEO Became a Core Business Function and Grew Organic Traffic 30%
• Slack SEO: Transforming an Invisible Function into a Strategic Growth Engine
• UPMC Search Optimization Team: Driving Enterprise SEO Transformation at Scale

Search Marketer Of The Year

• What Makes Greatness? Just Ask Kelly Betancourt
• Ana Fernández, Senior SEO Consultant, Previsible
• Prove It Was You: How JJ Koch Made the Entire Search Stack Answerable to Revenue at Deposco
• Nicolas Villeneuve: From $173:1 ROAS to +345% Revenue: The Agentic Search System Behind Quebec’s Biggest Brands
• Loki Yan: Breaking the Language Lock: Loki‘s Bridge to a Search Future That Speaks More Than One Language

Small Agency Of The Year – PPC

• ATRA & Medical Monks: Profit-Led Paid Media Strategy
• ATRA & Robinson & Henry: Capturing Colorado’s Legal Demand Through Full-Funnel PPC
• ATRA & Science Care: Modernizing Search Localization in an Automated PPC Landscape
• Blackbird PPC: Driving Quantifiable Business Growth Through Advanced Signal Incorporation and Rigorous Management, Testing, and Analysis
• Transparent & Scalable Profit via PPC and Meta (Starlight Digital)

Small Agency Of The Year – SEO

• How Aloha Life Digital drove a 220% revenue increase and 13x ROI for Sommet Nannies via search
• Firewire: 8 People in Newcastle. 21% Growth While the Industry Hedged.
• First Optimise: Small Team, Big Results. Taking Koupon.ai From 2 Pages to Page One
• Built for Buyers: How Living Online Rebuilt Plunkett Homes’ SEO From Search Query to Enquiry
• 15 Years of Real Returns: How Sixth City Marketing’s Mastery Is Just Getting Started

A huge thank you to our judges

A much-deserved thank you to our awesome group of judges for the 2026 Search Engine Land Awards. Our panel of judges had the difficult assignment of selecting the best of the best from a large number of submissions. Thank you:

• Olga Ivanovskaia, MycoMinds SEO
• Ameet Khabra, Hop Skip Media
• Mordy Oberstein, SE Ranking
• Brad Geddes, Adalysis
• Amy Hebdon, Paid Search Magic
• Melissa Mackey, Compound Growth Marketing
• Danita Smith, Adanis Design
• Cory Henke, Variable Media
• Sara Resnick, Western Union
• Joe Kerschbaum, DRT
• Navah Hopkins, Microsoft
• Celeste Gonzales, Lastmile Retail
• Adam Tanguay, Jordan Digital Marketing
• Jo Juliana Turnbull, Search London
• Matt Devhney, Tinuiti
• Brett Bodofsky, BAB Digital
• Danny Goodwin, Search Engine Land
• Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land
• Anu Adhegola, Search Engine Land