Distilled was founded in London in 2005 by Will Critchlow and Duncan Morris. The agency built its reputation on a combination of technical SEO expertise and a gift for making complex topics accessible through events and education.
The agency’s SearchLove conference series became one of the most respected events in the search marketing industry, attracting speakers and attendees from around the world. These conferences established Distilled as a thought leader and generated a steady flow of client leads.
Distilled’s client work focuses on organic search strategy for mid-market and enterprise brands. They’ve helped companies across e-commerce, travel, media, and financial services improve their organic visibility through technical optimization, content strategy, and digital PR.
In 2020, Brainlabs acquired Distilled, merging the agencies’ capabilities in search, analytics, and paid media. The Distilled brand continues as part of the Brainlabs family, bringing its SEO expertise to a broader suite of performance marketing services.
The agency also built Distilled ODN (Optimization Delivery Network), a platform that lets marketers run SEO A/B tests without developer resources. This product innovation demonstrated the team’s engineering capabilities and their understanding of what practitioners actually need.
Distilled’s team has contributed enormously to the SEO community through blog posts, conference talks, and open-source tools. Several alumni have gone on to lead search programs at major companies and start their own agencies.
