Published by Sue Johns-Chapman
Published Date 08.10.2026 A second national win for integrated search
Lightning can strike twice. We are proud to be the Integrated Search Agency of the Year at the 2026 US Agency Awards. This honor follows our Best Large Integrated Search Agency win at the 2025 U.S. Search Awards. Winning in the integrated search category matters to us because it describes how we work: search works best when every channel pulls in the same direction.
Our clients don’t buy SEO, paid media, CRO, email, and web design and development as separate line items. They hire us to grow. This award shows how we connect these pieces to drive unified growth for our clients.
Paid and organic work together
Many agencies still plan paid and organic search in separate rooms, with separate goals and separate reports. However, buyer behavior has been evolving across channels for years.
A prospect today might :
- See a client cited in an AI Overview or LLM
- Notice a paid placement on social media a day later
- The next day, they search organically and check reviews before calling
Treated separately, those touches compete for credit. Treated as unified marketing strategy, they build confidence.
“It’s way less separation of church and state between paid and organic search.”
– Matt Prater, EVP of Innovation, OuterBox
Our experts work together on integrated accounts as a team—sharing keyword data, landing pages, and test results. Organic research shows which questions and proof points buyers care about. Paid media puts the client in front of high-intent searches and quickly shows us what message wins. Authority building and earned third-party mentions give both channels something credible to point to. We can apply these learnings to CRO, email campaigns, and other digital campaign efforts.
This doesn’t mean every client advertises everywhere. We have experts in different channels that come together based on the business type and goals. However, it means every channel we run, no matter the combination, tells a consistent story about who the client is and why they’re the right choice.
Buyers decide before they click
The biggest change we’ve planned for this year is how buyers make decisions before visiting the website.
AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and other LLMs let buyers research a problem, compare vendors, and build a shortlist without opening a single site. Search hasn’t shrunk. It just moved.
“Google’s earnings reports show that search revenue was up 17%… There was good query growth.”
– Jeff Allen, CEO, OuterBox
For publishers, fewer clicks is a real threat. For the service companies, manufacturers, and eCommerce brands we work with, the pattern we see is different. Traffic on some sites has dipped while conversion rates and lead quality held steady or improved, because the visitors who do arrive have already done their homework.
“If they show up in an AI overview and convert twice as much, a business might accept 50% less traffic.”
– Matt Prater
So our work starts with making each of our clients’ content easy for people and machines to understand:
- Clear foundations: crawlable HTML, accurate schema, and plain answers to the questions buyers ask
- Earned authority: reviews, trade publications, industry events, and expert commentary that confirm what the client’s own site claims
- Consistent positioning: one description of who the client serves and why, repeated across every channel
Prater’s shorthand for all of it: good data in, good data out. Algorithms scale whatever you feed them, strong or weak.
We measure qualified demand, not raw traffic
If the decision happens before the click, traffic and rankings can’t carry much weight. Rankings are getting harder to trust on their own. Google Search Console now reports AI Overview links at position one, even when the link sits inside a collapsed menu, which inflates average position.
We judge search work by the opportunities that reach a sales team or end in a transaction. LOOP Analytics, our proprietary lead-tracking platform, ties lead form submissions and transactions back to the channel and campaign that produced them, then shows whether that lead was any good. That lets a client see when a dip in sessions came with more closed deals, and lets us move budget toward the searches that bring in real buyers.
Alongside it, we track whether clients appear in AI answers, which sources get cited, and how much referral traffic AI platforms send. Those numbers only matter when they connect to leads, sales, and revenue, so every report includes that.
Built by our team, earned with our clients
This award belongs to the Boxers who do the work every day, and to the clients who trust us with their growth. Our 325+ U.S.-based specialists have served more than 1,000 businesses across industrial, healthcare, housing, and eCommerce.
“Last year we said every business in America deserves great integrated marketing. This award tells us our team is delivering it. The way people search keeps changing, and our job is to make sure our clients are the answer when their buyers go looking.”
– Jeff Allen
The search experience will keep shifting. New AI features will launch, and some will stick. Our approach stays steady: diagnose where each client is today, meet them where they’re at, then take them further by connecting the channels around one clear message, and measure success by the business it brings in.
Thank you to the US Agency Awards judges and Don’t Panic Events for the recognition. If you want to see how connected search could work for your business, talk to our team.
