Company: Searchable
Co-founders: Chris Donnelly (CEO), Sam Hogan and Arya Nagabhyru
Website: https://www.searchable.com/
About Searchable
Searchable is an AI search visibility platform that shows brands and agencies how AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews describe them, which sources those answers are built from, and what to change so the answers improve.
Chris Donnelly founded Searchable in London in late 2025 with two engineers in their early twenties: Sam Hogan, who had already exited his own startup, Hirebird, and Arya Nagabhyru, a founding engineer at Y Combinator-backed Origami Agents.
AI chatbots are fast becoming the first place people go to research a product, a service or a company. Their answers lean heavily on earned media, such as news coverage, reviews and expert comment. Searchable supports PR teams in revealing which publications AI engines cite in their sector and for their product, where a brand is missing from the conversation, and whether a piece of coverage changed what the chatbots say.
Searchable also regularly runs its AI Search Accelerator, a programme with a dedicated track for agencies. Since launching, the cohort has supported 51 PR agencies and in-house comms teams in learning how to build their PR offering to tackle AI search visibility for themselves and their clients.
Brands that join Searchable’s cohort see an average 250% increase in AI product citations within 90 days of joining Searchable cohorts, while agencies generate an average of $47k in new annual revenue in the same timeframe.
PR teams, specifically, have seen AI chatbots cite their website and brand up to 70% more often in the first six weeks of working with Searchable, after taking the data and recommendations provided from the app and actioning them with targeted third-party placements.
Within around six months, brands that improved with Searchable saw AI search engines cite their website 70% more often on average, with some seeing gains of up to eight times within their first six weeks.
One big challenge has been educating customers and the wider marketing and PR community about a new category that sits close to SEO but is independent of it. Where SEO focussed on ranking well in Google with the support of PR teams building backlinks and authoritative coverage, answer engine optimisation (AEO) is about making sure a brand is recommended when people ask AI chatbots for the best product or service, and described accurately when they ask about it directly.
PR teams have also, understandably, been wary of how AI could affect their industry, from AI-generated content to fewer readers clicking through from search. So uncovering the opportunities around AEO that they can take forward into their business as a new or improved offering has been challenging, but immensely rewarding. For many teams it puts a new value on their earned media.
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