DeepCrawl, a web crawler and search marketing analytics and insights company, has taken £1.75 million in Series A funding led by growth investor Beringea. Beringea is investing £1.5 million, with the remaining funding provided by existing individual high net worth investors.
The company was founded in 2013 by Michal Magdziarz, Matt Jones, and Chris Evans. After struggling to find a tool that could give them the insights they needed while working on the redevelopment of a property website with millions of pages, they decided to build one themselves. Having grown more than 100 per cent annually over the past four years, DeepCrawl now has a global team of 35, and is aiming to once again double revenue over the next 12 months.
DeepCrawl’s web crawler provides brands with a comprehensive overview of their websites’ technical health. In-house and agency search marketing teams can get the data and actionable insights they need to make their websites more visible to users and turn organic traffic into revenue. The London-based company counts all six major global agency groups – WPP, Omnicom, Publicis, Havas, IPG, and Dentsu Aegis – and more than half of the Fortune 500 among its customers. Global brands using DeepCrawl include Microsoft, IBM, eBay, Salesforce, P&G, Home Depot, Sears, and Walmart.
Organic search traffic is a vital revenue stream for brands, especially those selling goods and services online. Eighty-one per cent of shoppers perform an online search before they make a purchase, and 40 per cent of all global e-commerce traffic is driven by search. DeepCrawl’s tool enables brands to audit their websites for any faults that may reduce search visibility and therefore traffic, and provides the actionable insights required to correct those faults.
It also provides ongoing performance monitoring, testing, and traffic optimisation capabilities. Brands using DeepCrawl have seen an average increase in site visibility of 62 per cent within 12 months, with one customer, US retailer Sears, reversing a 15 per cent year-on-year decline in organic traffic – equivalent to a $2 million loss in revenue – based on DeepCrawl insights.
This investment will support the company as it aims to continue the rapid growth of its development team and global customer base. Jon Myers, chief growth officer at DeepCrawl, comments, “We’ve matured considerably as a company over the past 12 months. We completely overhauled the platform, rebuilding it from the ground up without reusing a single line of code from version 1.0. That’s set us up to provide our customers with even more innovative features – including a major release this month – which is a vital foundation for our own continued growth. Beringea’s investment provides the support we need to achieve that.”
Myers sees significant challenges on the horizon for brands as a result of Google’s move to mobile-first search indexing: “Google has been testing its mobile-first index since November 2016, and full rollout could happen at any time. But with less than half of the most prominent websites having adopted responsive design or dynamic serving so far, there could be several brands that see their sites’ rankings – and, therefore, revenues – take a hit when the switch is flicked. Mobile is the new battleground for e-commerce and search marketing, and DeepCrawl is innovating to support customers with leading setup and analysis tools in this critical area,” he adds.
Stuart Veale, managing partner at Beringea, says, “DeepCrawl has built a market-leading position over the past four years, with some impressive technical innovation and a roster of high-profile global clients. As the ecommerce market continues to grow, and as mobile becomes the primary online platform, brands will have to pay even more attention to optimising their sites for search performance to unlock additional revenues. DeepCrawl is well-placed to help them through this process. We’re pleased to support the team in its continued growth and success.”
