Published by Sue Johns-Chapman
Published Date 07.07.2026 
For twenty-five years, search marketing has mostly been a game of rankings: get a page higher than a competitor’s, and the clicks follow. At Follo, we’ve spent the last year building for a different game. One where an AI platform reads across a brand’s entire footprint, weighs it against everything else it knows, and hands a user three or four recommendations instead of a page of ten blue links. Our nominations at this year’s Global Search Awards, twelve in total across five clients and for the agency itself, are largely built on that same bet.
Twelve nominations, one shared thread
Our shortlist this year spans five clients in health, automotive and retail, plus a nomination for Follo as an agency. The standout is our work with CROP for Nonpaints.com, which picked up five nominations, following two gold and several silver European Search Awards earlier this year. But no single campaign is the real story here. It’s that nearly every nomination touches AI search in some way — whether that’s judged directly under Best Use of AI, or simply reflects work built to hold up as AI-led formats take over.
We’re seeing the same pattern across the rest of the shortlist: our work with Louwman & Parqui (Toyota Netherlands) for Best Use of AI in Search and Best AI Search Optimisation Campaign, and with AXA Home Security for Best Use of AI in Content, all sit in the same territory. Alongside that, we’re proud to have been shortlisted as Best Global Large SEO Agency, and to see STOX Energy Socks and FD Ricambi B.V. recognised for sharp, resourceful campaigns in health and automotive search.
Why we think this matters beyond the trophy cabinet
The way brands earn trust with people and the way they earn trust with AI models are converging, and it’s something we’ve been telling our own clients for a while now. Increasingly, it isn’t a person alone typing a query into a search bar. It’s an AI platform searching, comparing and summarising on that person’s behalf, and deciding which three or four brands make it into the answer.
That shifts the core question for any brand from “am I ranking well” to “am I part of the answer the machine gives back”. For us, that means treating a client’s website as a source of truth an AI system can actually read and trust, not just a shop window for human visitors, and making sure a brand’s information holds up consistently everywhere an AI model might look for it, not only on the client’s own domain. That’s the thread running through every one of our nominations this year.
Who we are
Follo is a performance marketing agency based in the Netherlands and Belgium, working across search, social, marketplaces, data and AI for brands that want to compete at the edge of where the industry is heading. We’ve built our own technology stack, FolloEngine, to bring data, AI and content together into strategies clients can actually act on, and we work with teams across automotive, retail, health and beyond.
What’s next
This shortlist tells us the bet on AI-ready search is paying off, and it’s pushed us to lean further into it. We’ll be in Dublin this September for the ceremony, alongside clients and teams from around the world doing similarly ambitious work. Win or not, the work that got us here is the part we’re proud of.
Thank you to STOX Energy Socks, FD Ricambi B.V., CROP / Nonpaints.com, Louwman & Parqui B.V. and AXA Home Security for trusting us with your search strategy, and to the Follo team for the curiosity that got us this far.
