What does Deadpan Labs actually do?

Deadpan Labs is a Miami ecommerce growth agency. We get Shopify and DTC brands found — ranked in classic search and named in the AI answers buyers now ask first — and we run the brand, content and paid work around it. Most stores treat search and AI visibility as something a tool reports on and nobody owns; we own it, measure it monthly against the questions your buyers actually ask, and hand you the raw answers so you can check the work. The unusual part is what sits underneath: we also build the platform the business runs on, so the marketing numbers and the store's own operations live in one place instead of in a slide deck. The growth work is the engagement; the platform is why our version of it is better instrumented than a report.

Can you really run the marketing and build the systems it runs on?

Yes — the growth work and the systems under it are the same engagement here, not two contracts with a handoff in the middle. That handoff is usually where things break: the agency asks for a product feed the dev shop hasn't built, or ships content the storefront can't render cleanly enough for a machine to read. Because we own both ends, the structured data, the feeds, and the pages that decide whether an engine can read your catalog get fixed rather than filed as a ticket. The growth work leads and the build follows it, in that order.

What kind of software do you build for a store?

Storefronts and the systems behind them: the operating dashboard that ties orders, inventory, fulfillment, payments, CRM and campaign metrics together, plus custom software, internal tools, mobile apps, and browser extensions when a store needs one. The useful part is that it doesn't stop at delivery — the team building it is the team already working on how buyers find you, so the catalog gets built to be read by a parser as well as by a shopper. This work is sold on its own, and it is not a precondition for hiring us for growth.

Can I hire you for just the growth work, or just the build?

Yes — either side stands on its own, and most engagements start with the growth work. That's the front door: a check on whether the assistants name you today, then the search and AI-search retainer. If all you want is the platform or a custom build, we scope exactly that instead. The difference is that when you're ready for more, it's the same team picking it up rather than a stranger being briefed on a store they've never seen.

How do I know you can ship, not just advise?

Deadpan Labs builds and grows its own brands and products — one of them taken from zero to 900+ downloads organically, with no ad spend — and runs them on the same platform we sell. We're a new firm and we say so plainly: rather than point at a roster, we point at our own stores and products, which go through the same work we'd put yours through. Every method reaches you after it has been tested on something we own. That's the honest version of proof available to us, and we'd rather offer it than dress up something we don't have.

What can you run for us beyond search and AI visibility?

The core is getting the store found: SEO and GEO run together, measured monthly. Around it, add what the business needs — brand development and creative, paid media across Meta, TikTok and Google, retention and email, and security and compliance work. Underneath all of it, if you want it, sits the platform: a modular dashboard tying your orders and operations, content, billing and seat usage, and monitoring into one pane, wired through our own integration engine — the one this company already runs its production email through. We build it, hand it over with your team trained on it, and keep it working — a tool, not a labor shop. The reason to consolidate is that most stacks have quietly stopped being legible to the people running them: BetterCloud's 2026 State of SaaS report found that only 56% of the applications organizations actually use carry IT approval, and that mid-market organizations went from an average of 116 apps to 164 in a single year. Start with the growth work and add from there; you decide how much we carry.

What is GEO, and why does AI search matter now?

GEO — generative engine optimization — is getting your brand named and cited inside AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini, not just ranked in a list of blue links. It matters now because the answer is absorbing the click: the Pew Research Center tracked 900 U.S. adults across 68,879 Google searches in March 2025 and found they clicked a traditional search result on 8% of visits where an AI summary appeared, against 15% of visits where none did — and clicked a link inside the summary itself on just 1%. More buyers now ask an assistant for a recommendation and act on the answer, so the model's shortlist is the new front page — and if a competitor is the name that comes back, you've lost the deal before anyone visits a site. This is the core of what we do, run end-to-end — not another $99/month dashboard telling you you're invisible and leaving the fixing to you. We start by checking whether the assistants recommend you today and who they cite instead, then hand you a ranked list of what to fix to get named, and do the fixing.

How is GEO different from SEO?

SEO gets your page ranked in a list of links; GEO gets your brand named inside the AI-generated answer itself. They overlap heavily, and the overlap is measurable: Semrush, in a study of 5,000 keywords and more than 150,000 citations, found that Perplexity's cited domains match Google's organic top ten more than 91% of the time and its cited URLs 82% of the time, while Google AI Overviews reuses roughly 86% of the same domains. Ranking is now closer to a precondition for being cited than a substitute for it. The jobs still differ — AI engines don't only rank, they synthesize, composing a recommendation from sources they already trust — which is why we run the classic search work and the GEO work together rather than as two contracts.

How do I get cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews?

You get cited when AI engines can cleanly read your site, your pages answer the questions buyers actually ask, and you're present in the sources those models already trust. Missing any one of those keeps you out of the answer. It's rarely a single broken switch — it's a discoverability gap across your content and where you show up online. Our GEO audit pinpoints exactly which of those is holding you back and hands it back as a ranked list of fixes, so you're working the highest-impact problem first.

Can you check whether AI assistants actually recommend me?

Yes — we run an AI-visibility check that asks the questions your buyers ask and records whether the assistants name you, where, and who gets cited instead. Most companies have never seen this and are quietly surprised by the answer. Knowing a competitor is the default recommendation for your own category is uncomfortable, but it's the first honest read on where you stand in AI search. The check gives you that read, and the GEO audit turns it into a plan to change it.

Why should I care about being named by an AI over ranking on Google?

A growing share of buyers now ask an assistant for a recommendation and act on the shortlist it gives them, without scrolling a page of links. If the model doesn't know you exist, you're not in the running — no click to lose, because there was never a click. Ranking still matters, but it's no longer the only door. We work to get you named in the answer and ranked on the page, which is why we run GEO and SEO together as one job rather than two.

How does pricing work?

The search and AI-search work is a monthly retainer, and the bands plus the factors that move them are published on our pricing page rather than held back for a call. A platform build or a custom piece on top is scoped to the actual work, not a fixed menu, and the platform itself is priced by seats and packs. Because one team handles the growth work and the systems under it, you get a single plan for the whole arc instead of two vendors quoting separately and hoping the numbers meet in the middle. Tell us what you're selling and what you're trying to grow through our request flow, and we come back with a plan scoped to it — nothing to commit to before you see it.

How long does this take, and how soon can you start?

Timelines depend on the work — an AI-visibility check turns around fast, a GEO and technical audit takes longer, and a full platform build-out longer still — so we give you a real schedule once we've scoped the job, not a stock number. One expectation worth setting: visibility in AI answers moves on the cadence at which independent sources get written and re-crawled, not on the cadence of a sprint. The first monthly panel is a baseline, and the trend is the figure that survives run-to-run variance. Tell us your deadline in the request flow and we'll tell you honestly what fits.

How involved do I have to be?

You bring the store and the context; we carry the growth work and the systems under it. Early on we'll need real answers about your catalog, your margins, and who actually buys from you, because a panel of questions written in a vacuum measures the wrong things. After that the day-to-day is ours — one team, so you're briefing us rather than refereeing between a developer and a marketer. You stay as close as you want to be, without the work stalling every time you're busy.

What happens after launch — is this a one-off or ongoing?

Ongoing, by the nature of the work — search and AI visibility are a standing position competitors keep contesting, not a project that closes. The panel runs monthly, the citation work compounds, and the platform keeps running underneath. We can carry all of it, or hand off cleanly if you'd rather run day-to-day in-house — that's the whole point of training your team on the platform in the first place. You decide how much we stay on for; we make sure nothing goes quiet the moment it goes live.

Who owns the code and the work you build?

You own what we build for you. On full payment, every deliverable we create for your project — code, content, assets — is assigned to you outright; third-party licensed elements stay under their own licenses, and we name those up front. The platform you run on is licensed, and that's stated plainly in the agreement rather than buried in it. We're the team that makes your product, not a landlord you rent it from. That's the plain answer to a question anyone commissioning software should ask, and the reason we put it in writing rather than leave it implied. What you pay us to build, you keep.

Will I have visibility into the work, or am I left in the dark?

You get your own dashboard at yourname.deadpanlabs.com — your projects, deliverables and updates, in your brand, on your own subdomain. It's the same portal we run our own company on. Agency work often goes quiet between a kickoff call and a surprise invoice; the portal is our answer to that. You can check what's in progress and what's shipped without scheduling a status meeting to find out. It's a small thing that reflects a larger one: the same team is building and marketing your product, and you can watch both move in one place.

Why you instead of an agency plus a separate dev shop — or a freelancer?

With a marketing agency and a separate dev shop, no single team owns both the store's growth and the systems that growth depends on, and the gap between them is where the work stalls — the agency asks for a clean product feed and waits a quarter for it. A freelancer might cover one side well, rarely both. We're one team running the search and AI-search work and building the platform under it, so there's no translation layer and no blame handoff. You brief one team and it stays that way, start to finish.

You start by telling us about your store through our request flow, and we come back with a plan — usually the fastest way to find out whether we're the right team for the job. Most engagements open the same way: a check on whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI name you today for the questions your buyers ask, and which brands they name instead. There's no long procurement ritual; describing the work in plain terms, messy parts included, is enough to get a real plan back.

What if I'm not on Shopify, or not an ecommerce brand at all?

The work fits any business that needs to be found and recommended; ecommerce and Shopify are the specialty, not a gate. We name them because a store is where the gap shows up hardest — a shopper asking an assistant what to buy gets a shortlist of two to five brands and nothing else, so being unnamed costs the whole query. Other carts, marketplace sellers, and non-ecommerce businesses run through the same measurement and the same fixes. If getting found in search and in AI answers matters to you, tell us what you're working on.

Where are you based, and who do you work with?

Deadpan Labs is a small firm based in Miami, Florida, founded in 2026, working remote-first with brands anywhere. We're built for small and growing ecommerce companies — Shopify and DTC brands first, marketplace sellers welcome — the ones where getting found decides whether the thing takes off. Miami also means Spanish-language coverage is a first-class part of the work rather than an add-on. Being small is deliberate: you work with the people doing the work, not an account manager relaying messages to a team you never meet.

// faq

Answers before the first conversation.

Deadpan Labs is a Miami ecommerce growth agency. We get Shopify and DTC brands found — in search and in the AI answers buyers now ask first — and we build the platform the business runs on. Every part of it is sold on its own. The answers below cover what we do, how pricing works, who owns the result, and how to start.

21 answers, in 4 groups. None of them promise you a ranking or promise that an AI assistant will recommend you, because no vendor controls what a search engine ranks or what a model says — and a page that claims otherwise is telling you something about the vendor, not about the work.

Last updated 2026-08-22 · Deadpan Labs · Miami, FL

01What we do

What does Deadpan Labs actually do?: Deadpan Labs is a Miami ecommerce growth agency. We get Shopify and DTC brands found — ranked in classic search and named in the AI answers buyers now ask first — and we run the brand, content and paid work around it. Most stores treat search and AI visibility as something a tool reports on and nobody owns; we own it, measure it monthly against the questions your buyers actually ask, and hand you the raw answers so you can check the work. The unusual part is what sits underneath: we also build the platform the business runs on, so the marketing numbers and the store's own operations live in one place instead of in a slide deck. The growth work is the engagement; the platform is why our version of it is better instrumented than a report.
Can you really run the marketing and build the systems it runs on?: Yes — the growth work and the systems under it are the same engagement here, not two contracts with a handoff in the middle. That handoff is usually where things break: the agency asks for a product feed the dev shop hasn't built, or ships content the storefront can't render cleanly enough for a machine to read. Because we own both ends, the structured data, the feeds, and the pages that decide whether an engine can read your catalog get fixed rather than filed as a ticket. The growth work leads and the build follows it, in that order.
What kind of software do you build for a store?: Storefronts and the systems behind them: the operating dashboard that ties orders, inventory, fulfillment, payments, CRM and campaign metrics together, plus custom software, internal tools, mobile apps, and browser extensions when a store needs one. The useful part is that it doesn't stop at delivery — the team building it is the team already working on how buyers find you, so the catalog gets built to be read by a parser as well as by a shopper. This work is sold on its own, and it is not a precondition for hiring us for growth.
Can I hire you for just the growth work, or just the build?: Yes — either side stands on its own, and most engagements start with the growth work. That's the front door: a check on whether the assistants name you today, then the search and AI-search retainer. If all you want is the platform or a custom build, we scope exactly that instead. The difference is that when you're ready for more, it's the same team picking it up rather than a stranger being briefed on a store they've never seen.
How do I know you can ship, not just advise?: Deadpan Labs builds and grows its own brands and products — one of them taken from zero to 900+ downloads organically, with no ad spend — and runs them on the same platform we sell. We're a new firm and we say so plainly: rather than point at a roster, we point at our own stores and products, which go through the same work we'd put yours through. Every method reaches you after it has been tested on something we own. That's the honest version of proof available to us, and we'd rather offer it than dress up something we don't have.
What can you run for us beyond search and AI visibility?: The core is getting the store found: SEO and GEO run together, measured monthly. Around it, add what the business needs — brand development and creative, paid media across Meta, TikTok and Google, retention and email, and security and compliance work. Underneath all of it, if you want it, sits the platform: a modular dashboard tying your orders and operations, content, billing and seat usage, and monitoring into one pane, wired through our own integration engine — the one this company already runs its production email through. We build it, hand it over with your team trained on it, and keep it working — a tool, not a labor shop. The reason to consolidate is that most stacks have quietly stopped being legible to the people running them: BetterCloud's 2026 State of SaaS report found that only 56% of the applications organizations actually use carry IT approval, and that mid-market organizations went from an average of 116 apps to 164 in a single year. Start with the growth work and add from there; you decide how much we carry.

02GEO and AI search

What is GEO, and why does AI search matter now?: GEO — generative engine optimization — is getting your brand named and cited inside AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini, not just ranked in a list of blue links. It matters now because the answer is absorbing the click: the Pew Research Center tracked 900 U.S. adults across 68,879 Google searches in March 2025 and found they clicked a traditional search result on 8% of visits where an AI summary appeared, against 15% of visits where none did — and clicked a link inside the summary itself on just 1%. More buyers now ask an assistant for a recommendation and act on the answer, so the model's shortlist is the new front page — and if a competitor is the name that comes back, you've lost the deal before anyone visits a site. This is the core of what we do, run end-to-end — not another $99/month dashboard telling you you're invisible and leaving the fixing to you. We start by checking whether the assistants recommend you today and who they cite instead, then hand you a ranked list of what to fix to get named, and do the fixing.
How is GEO different from SEO?: SEO gets your page ranked in a list of links; GEO gets your brand named inside the AI-generated answer itself. They overlap heavily, and the overlap is measurable: Semrush, in a study of 5,000 keywords and more than 150,000 citations, found that Perplexity's cited domains match Google's organic top ten more than 91% of the time and its cited URLs 82% of the time, while Google AI Overviews reuses roughly 86% of the same domains. Ranking is now closer to a precondition for being cited than a substitute for it. The jobs still differ — AI engines don't only rank, they synthesize, composing a recommendation from sources they already trust — which is why we run the classic search work and the GEO work together rather than as two contracts.
How do I get cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews?: You get cited when AI engines can cleanly read your site, your pages answer the questions buyers actually ask, and you're present in the sources those models already trust. Missing any one of those keeps you out of the answer. It's rarely a single broken switch — it's a discoverability gap across your content and where you show up online. Our GEO audit pinpoints exactly which of those is holding you back and hands it back as a ranked list of fixes, so you're working the highest-impact problem first.
Can you check whether AI assistants actually recommend me?: Yes — we run an AI-visibility check that asks the questions your buyers ask and records whether the assistants name you, where, and who gets cited instead. Most companies have never seen this and are quietly surprised by the answer. Knowing a competitor is the default recommendation for your own category is uncomfortable, but it's the first honest read on where you stand in AI search. The check gives you that read, and the GEO audit turns it into a plan to change it.
Why should I care about being named by an AI over ranking on Google?: A growing share of buyers now ask an assistant for a recommendation and act on the shortlist it gives them, without scrolling a page of links. If the model doesn't know you exist, you're not in the running — no click to lose, because there was never a click. Ranking still matters, but it's no longer the only door. We work to get you named in the answer and ranked on the page, which is why we run GEO and SEO together as one job rather than two.

03How we work

How does pricing work?: The search and AI-search work is a monthly retainer, and the bands plus the factors that move them are published on our pricing page rather than held back for a call. A platform build or a custom piece on top is scoped to the actual work, not a fixed menu, and the platform itself is priced by seats and packs. Because one team handles the growth work and the systems under it, you get a single plan for the whole arc instead of two vendors quoting separately and hoping the numbers meet in the middle. Tell us what you're selling and what you're trying to grow through our request flow, and we come back with a plan scoped to it — nothing to commit to before you see it.
How long does this take, and how soon can you start?: Timelines depend on the work — an AI-visibility check turns around fast, a GEO and technical audit takes longer, and a full platform build-out longer still — so we give you a real schedule once we've scoped the job, not a stock number. One expectation worth setting: visibility in AI answers moves on the cadence at which independent sources get written and re-crawled, not on the cadence of a sprint. The first monthly panel is a baseline, and the trend is the figure that survives run-to-run variance. Tell us your deadline in the request flow and we'll tell you honestly what fits.
How involved do I have to be?: You bring the store and the context; we carry the growth work and the systems under it. Early on we'll need real answers about your catalog, your margins, and who actually buys from you, because a panel of questions written in a vacuum measures the wrong things. After that the day-to-day is ours — one team, so you're briefing us rather than refereeing between a developer and a marketer. You stay as close as you want to be, without the work stalling every time you're busy.
What happens after launch — is this a one-off or ongoing?: Ongoing, by the nature of the work — search and AI visibility are a standing position competitors keep contesting, not a project that closes. The panel runs monthly, the citation work compounds, and the platform keeps running underneath. We can carry all of it, or hand off cleanly if you'd rather run day-to-day in-house — that's the whole point of training your team on the platform in the first place. You decide how much we stay on for; we make sure nothing goes quiet the moment it goes live.
Who owns the code and the work you build?: You own what we build for you. On full payment, every deliverable we create for your project — code, content, assets — is assigned to you outright; third-party licensed elements stay under their own licenses, and we name those up front. The platform you run on is licensed, and that's stated plainly in the agreement rather than buried in it. We're the team that makes your product, not a landlord you rent it from. That's the plain answer to a question anyone commissioning software should ask, and the reason we put it in writing rather than leave it implied. What you pay us to build, you keep.
Will I have visibility into the work, or am I left in the dark?: You get your own dashboard at yourname.deadpanlabs.com — your projects, deliverables and updates, in your brand, on your own subdomain. It's the same portal we run our own company on. Agency work often goes quiet between a kickoff call and a surprise invoice; the portal is our answer to that. You can check what's in progress and what's shipped without scheduling a status meeting to find out. It's a small thing that reflects a larger one: the same team is building and marketing your product, and you can watch both move in one place.
Why you instead of an agency plus a separate dev shop — or a freelancer?: With a marketing agency and a separate dev shop, no single team owns both the store's growth and the systems that growth depends on, and the gap between them is where the work stalls — the agency asks for a clean product feed and waits a quarter for it. A freelancer might cover one side well, rarely both. We're one team running the search and AI-search work and building the platform under it, so there's no translation layer and no blame handoff. You brief one team and it stays that way, start to finish.

04Getting started

How do we start?: You start by telling us about your store through our request flow, and we come back with a plan — usually the fastest way to find out whether we're the right team for the job. Most engagements open the same way: a check on whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI name you today for the questions your buyers ask, and which brands they name instead. There's no long procurement ritual; describing the work in plain terms, messy parts included, is enough to get a real plan back.
What if I'm not on Shopify, or not an ecommerce brand at all?: The work fits any business that needs to be found and recommended; ecommerce and Shopify are the specialty, not a gate. We name them because a store is where the gap shows up hardest — a shopper asking an assistant what to buy gets a shortlist of two to five brands and nothing else, so being unnamed costs the whole query. Other carts, marketplace sellers, and non-ecommerce businesses run through the same measurement and the same fixes. If getting found in search and in AI answers matters to you, tell us what you're working on.
Where are you based, and who do you work with?: Deadpan Labs is a small firm based in Miami, Florida, founded in 2026, working remote-first with brands anywhere. We're built for small and growing ecommerce companies — Shopify and DTC brands first, marketplace sellers welcome — the ones where getting found decides whether the thing takes off. Miami also means Spanish-language coverage is a first-class part of the work rather than an add-on. Being small is deliberate: you work with the people doing the work, not an account manager relaying messages to a team you never meet.

Tell us about your store.

One team runs the search and AI-search work and builds the systems under it. Describe what you sell and we'll come back with a plan scoped to it — starting, if you want, with a look at whether the assistants name you today.

Start a conversation →