Louis Riat-Bonello, 27, set up Optisearch to get small firms found on Google; he is up for Emerging Leader of the Year, with the winner named on 19 November.
Search for a plumber in East Dulwich, a care home near Herne Hill or an accountant on Lordship Lane, and the firms you see first are rarely chosen for being the best. They are the ones that have worked out how to appear. That gap is the business Louis Riat-Bonello went into, and it has put him in a national final.
The 27-year-old from Beckenham, managing director of the search marketing agency Optisearch, is a finalist for Emerging Leader of the Year at the National Young Business Leader Awards 2026. The winners will be announced on Thursday 19 November 2026 at Unity Place, Milton Keynes.
The problem, in his words
He traces the agency back to one thing he kept seeing:
“I started Optisearch because I saw how many good local businesses were invisible online, losing customers to bigger brands simply because they weren’t showing up.”
Anyone who runs a shop, a practice or a trade in SE21 or SE22 will know the feeling: a customer who lives three streets away finds a national chain first, because that is what the search page put in front of them.
Two ways onto the page
Optisearch describes itself as a Google Ads and SEO agency helping UK businesses win more customers from search. Those are the two routes onto a Google results page for a small business: pay for an advert in the slots at the top, or earn a place in the ordinary results beneath them.
He founded the agency in 2022. It now has a team of six and, it says, more than 60 clients across the UK and internationally, including tradespeople, care homes and professional services firms.
Counting enquiries, not clicks
The agency’s pitch is that it follows a customer past the click to the phone call or the form. For September 2026, it says that across all its clients it helped small businesses “generate, track and attribute 3554 new enquiries from Google marketing”.
In its words, that “created around £5 million in quoted work, and £1-2 million in sales so far”. These are Optisearch’s own totals across its client list; we have not seen the data behind them.
For a Dulwich business the useful part is the method rather than the totals. Before spending money on being found, it helps to know which enquiries came from a search at all, and which of those turned into paid work. Without that, an advert that brings plenty of clicks and no customers looks the same as one that fills the diary.
The shortlisting
The National Young Business Leader Awards, according to Optisearch’s announcement, celebrate the next generation of business leaders driving innovation and making a difference in the business community. His category is Emerging Leader of the Year, and he is quick to share it:
“Being shortlisted is a real honour, and it belongs to my team and the clients who’ve trusted us to help them grow.”
What it means for you
If you run a small business in Dulwich, Peckham or Camberwell, try the search your customers would make, your trade plus the area, and see whether you are on the first page. If you are not, the choice is between paying for an advert and earning a place in the ordinary results, and either way it is worth measuring the enquiries it brings rather than the visits.
Louis Riat-Bonello says he is available to talk about the shortlisting. More about him and his work is on his own site, louisriatbonello.com, and the agency’s number is 020 4572 2042. The result comes on 19 November.
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