Louis Riat-Bonello, 27, whose Optisearch agency gets tradespeople and care homes found on Google, is an Emerging Leader of the Year finalist for 19 November.
When a tradesperson or a care home gets a phone call from someone who found them on Google, there is a fair chance an agency set up the advert or the search ranking that put them there. One such agency, run by a 27-year-old from Beckenham, just over the Lewisham boundary, now has its founder in the final of a national award.
Louis Riat-Bonello, managing director of Optisearch, is one of the finalists for Emerging Leader of the Year at the National Young Business Leader Awards 2026. The winners will be named on Thursday 19 November at Unity Place in Milton Keynes.
Plumbers, carers and the Google search box
Optisearch works on search advertising and SEO, the two routes by which a business turns up when somebody types what they need into Google: paying for an advert at the top of the page, or earning a place in the ordinary results.
He founded it in 2022. The agency says it now has more than 60 clients across the UK and abroad, among them tradespeople, care homes and professional services firms, and a team that has grown to six.
His reason for starting it is the one familiar to anyone who has run a small firm and watched a bigger name take the work:
“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.”
The agency’s September figures
The agency measures itself on enquiries and the work they lead to, rather than on clicks. For September 2026, it says that across all of its clients it helped small businesses “generate, track and attribute 3554 new enquiries from Google marketing”.
By its own reckoning those enquiries produced around £5 million in quoted work and between £1 million and £2 million in sales so far. These are Optisearch’s figures, totalled across its client list; we have not seen the data behind them.
A shortlisting he hands to the team
The National Young Business Leader Awards, Optisearch says, celebrate the next generation of business leaders driving innovation and making a difference in the business community. Emerging Leader of the Year is his category.
He does not keep the credit for himself:
“Being shortlisted is a real honour, and it belongs to my team and the clients who’ve trusted us to help them grow.”
Before the final
The result comes on 19 November in Milton Keynes. Until then, Louis Riat-Bonello says he is happy to talk about the shortlisting. More about him and his work is on his own site, louisriatbonello.com, and the agency can be reached on 020 4572 2042.
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