Nitin Karunakaran

Nitin Karunakaran is the National Head of SEO at Alley Group, where he leads organic reach and AI search strategies for major Australian brands, including JB Hi-Fi, Metricon and Early Settler.

His current work explores how consumer discovery is changing as AI platforms and autonomous agents begin influencing which brands and products people consider, compare and purchase. He helps brands strengthen their visibility across traditional search and AI-generated recommendations by improving their content, authority, product information and digital presence.

Outside his agency role, Nitin builds marketing decision-intelligence tools that combine search, social, trend, competitor and customer data to help marketers identify opportunities and make faster decisions.

• Led the local search strategy for Metricon across more than 100 locations, contributing to a 36% year-on-year increase in Google Search views. The work was featured as an international Semrush case study, and Nitin was invited to present the approach in a Semrush webinar.
• Developed a methodology for turning anonymised AI shopping-assistant conversations into actionable ecommerce insights, identifying information gaps, purchase barriers and product-page improvements. Featured by Preezie as an ecommerce case study.