SearchLab recently celebrated its ninth birthday at the beginning of March. In the early days, it was Mark Bealin, Tim Dini, and a small team crammed into a tiny office on Clark Street, working late into the night, reviewing every client they had on Friday evenings. Eventually those Friday reviews had to stop with too many clients to get through in one sitting. That was the first sign something was working.

From there, the team moved into a concrete shell of a space on Belle Plaine Avenue. Folding tables, a few chairs, and a kitchen bought off Facebook Marketplace made up the first SearchLab office building.

As Tim described it, “We looked like a company that had no business surviving. We survived anyway.” Today SearchLab has over 50 people on the team and clients across the country.

Here is a look at how we got here and an immense amount of gratitude.

Nine Years of Audits, Campaigns, and Real Results

Nine years of work leaves a trail of real data. Our team has performed over 3,000 Local SEO audits and analyzed more than 8,000 Google Business Profiles.

The results for our clients reflect that experience. For Bobcat of Houston, our PPC team built a scalable campaign structure that cut cost-per-lead by 29%, grew new leads by 35%, and increased new users by 40%. For Stivers Ford Montgomery, our Local SEO work drove a 155% increase in new leads, an 88% increase in new calls, and 850% blog growth.

Some Hardware Along the Way

SearchLab has made the Inc. 5000 list four times, placing us among the fastest-growing private companies in the United States four years running. We have won multiple US Search Awards, a US Agency Award, and has been shortlisted for over a dozen more. In 2022, Microsoft named us their Global Emerging Partner of the Year and this year, Google recognized us as a 2026 Premier Partner, placing SearchLab in the top 3% of Google Partners agencies in the country.

Each of those accomplishments reflect where the work has taken us over nine years and the wonderful clients who trusted us along the way.

The Team That Got Us Here

The work is only as good as the people doing it and that has always been true here.

The executive team has been around the block a few times. It starts with Mark Bealin, who founded SearchLab in 2017 and has been building it ever since, and Tim Dini, who has kept operations running from the beginning. Between the full leadership team, we are sitting at a cumulative 183 years of digital marketing experience (24 if you do not count the old guy, Tim). Greg Gifford is one of the top five Local SEO experts in the world and a Platinum Google Business Profile Product Expert. Diane Reed, our Director of Business Development, has been connecting local businesses with the right marketing strategies since 2021.

Last year, we added Noah Weiner as Chief Strategy Officer, who has spent 15 years scaling agencies and SaaS companies, and Ashley Segura as Director of Marketing, one of the most recognized content marketers in the industry. Most recently, Hazel Chen joined as Head of Customer Success, bringing a sharp focus on the client experience that our growing roster of clients deserves.

The executive team is only part of the story. The day-to-day work at SearchLab gets done by two teams who are exceptional at what they do. Our SEO team, led by Sean Hupp, handles the local search work that drives real visibility for multi-location brands across search, maps, and beyond. Our PPC team, led by Matt Keevan, runs the paid media programs that put clients in front of the right customers at the right moment. That team was shaped in no small part by the late Mark Irvine, whose influence on how we approach paid search is still felt today.

In addition to Greg and Ashley, SEO and AI expert Dane Saville and our resident PPC expert Susan Yen are regularly on stages around the world teaching the latest in digital marketing. SearchLab has never held tightly to what works, if we figure something out, we share it.

Over fifty talented and kind people work at SearchLab. Every one of them is in this.

Same Focus, Bigger Operation

Nine years in, the focus is the same as it was at the start. Search visibility should lead to real business outcomes, not rankings for the sake of rankings. That means generating qualified leads, store visits, and customer growth for all of our clients.

We work primarily with multi-location brands because that is where the real complexity lives. Managing visibility across dozens or hundreds of locations requires systems, coordination, and attention to detail that takes years to build and that is where our experience is deepest.

Eyes on Year Ten and Grateful For it All

We have a lot brewing! This year we are heavily investing in new service offerings to help clients show up across every surface that matters, including search, maps, forums, paid media, and the AI-driven discovery platforms that are changing how customers find businesses.

Search is changing faster than it has in years and we are more excited than ever.

Nine years in, the thing we are most grateful for is simple: clients who trust us with their business and a team that takes that seriously every day.

Here is to year ten.