Botify, a search engine optimization tools and apps provider has revealed that it raised $55 million in a Series C financing round. The total collected funds of the company now amount to $82 million. Adrien Menard, CEO of Botify, said that the funds will be employed in the growth, development of the partner ecosystem, and increasing its global footprint. The financing round was led by InfraVia Growth and joined by Bpifrance, Eurazeo, and Ventech.
Online shifting of businesses has increased the need for top rankings in web searches. 53% of web traffic is driven by 80,000 searches done per second. These numbers are not constant. Google Search saw more than 4,500 algorithm updates and changes last year. Botify increases the rankings in searches by providing a platform that identifies and rectifies related problems.
The company develops and maintains AI-enabled analytics and automation tools that leverage more than 1,000 metrics to understand a website’s content, search engines’ behaviours, and users’ intent, working with major search engines and internet infrastructure companies to ensure compliance with guidelines. Menard, Thomas Grange, and Stan Chauvin, who previously worked together at a digital marketing business, launched Botify. According to Menard, the trio came to the conclusion that businesses were spending too much time tweaking content and keywords without knowing whether Google and other search engines were even indexing their websites.
Google does not crawl about half of the pages on large enterprise websites. Menard explained that if a page is not crawled or discovered by Google, it will never rank in search engines and so will not create visitors or income. This is how Botify was founded, with eBay, BlaBlaCar, and Expedia in France among our initial customers. In 2016, [we] entered the US market. Fast forward to the present, and the United States now accounts for over 60% of [our] income.
Botify, according to Menard, trains its algorithms using a 2-petabyte dataset that includes raw crawl data, server logs, search data, conversion, and revenue data. RealKeywords, a service that helps customers identify what keywords visitors are searching for, how they got to the pages, and where else they might be going, is powered by algorithms. Understanding the purpose when looking at query data on a website might be difficult, according to Menard. Menard added that they extend the platform with capabilities to improve insight into the millions of queries being searched and analyzed every day by using natural language processing techniques and unsupervised machine learning algorithms. Botify created a bespoke architecture for algorithm development, training, and tweaking to assist manage its data science stack. To date, the company has used it to create algorithms capable of detecting “strategic” webpages, detecting key faults, forecasting traffic decreases, and generating missing links, text, and metadata.
Companies require a comprehensive solution to maximize performance because the organic search may drive up to 30% of traffic and revenue on a corporate website, according to Menard. Brands must equip their staff with the necessary skills to analyze their performance, devise action plans, and implement solutions that will result in increased revenue. Botify is the ideal solution since it allows organic search teams to assess, determine, and apply optimizations more quickly. Botify is a small part of the $80 billion search engine optimization (SEO) market. Businesses spent $47.5 billion on SEO-related products and services in 2020, and by 2025, the market is expected to increase at a 20% compound annual growth rate.
However, a 200-employee company Botify claims that its yearly revenue and valuation have tripled since its last investment round in 2019, with annual revenue approaching $100 million and annual growth nearing 60%. Expedia, Macy’s, Marriott, L’Oréal, Crate & Barrel, Conde Nast, Groupon, GitHub, The New York Times, and 500 other companies in the e-commerce, travel, and media and publishing categories are among the company’s current customers.
Botify, which launched in 2016, claims that US-based brands contribute more than 60% of its income. A portion of the new capital will be used to expand in the Asia Pacific, specifically by expanding operations and engaging with “key brands and partners” in the region. Menard went on to say that 2020 proved that search is an integral part of our lives now. Coming up on searches is a better opportunity for businesses to create a name of their own and generate more revenue.
