About

Founder-led local search, measured every week.

Merkat is run by its founder, Elena Devanadera. She has founded multiple six- and seven-figure businesses, and built Craftera Wholesale to seven figures in total sales. Merkat, based in Surrey, BC, is where she now puts that experience to work for local service businesses: getting you found, ranked across your area and turning searches into calls, and reporting exactly what happened. Here is what we do for Surrey and Fraser Valley businesses.

Elena Devanadera

Founder · Merkat Digital Marketing Inc.

Elena has founded multiple six- and seven-figure businesses. She built Craftera Wholesale, an e-commerce brand, to seven figures in total sales, using search, paid ads and, more recently, AI answer engines, backed by years of hands-on work and the AI tools that now make it faster. See the numbers

  • Search and SEO. The pages, titles and local signals that decide who shows up, street by street
  • Google Business Profile. The profile behind the map pack: categories, services, hours and photos, kept right
  • Paid ads. Spending only where the numbers show it comes back, and stopping where it does not
  • AI answer engines. How ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity decide which business to name, and what changes that
  • Measurement and analytics. Every channel traced to what it brought in; she runs the strategy and the weekly re-measurement on every account
  • Ecommerce growth. Took Craftera's online store from CA$49K in its launch year to CA$503K in its first full year

Why online-store experience matters to a roofer: an online store lives or dies on measured customer acquisition, where every dollar is traced to a sale. Most trades marketing is still judged by feel. Elena brings the first habit to the second.

What Elena has done with her own brand

Merkat sells nothing Elena has not done for a business of her own first. Craftera Wholesale is the wholesale craft-supply business she built in Langley, BC, and these are its numbers, straight from Shopify and Google Search Console.

Seven figures

Total sales at Craftera Wholesale, online and wholesale orders paid by e-transfer together.

CA$864K

Online store sales from its launch in 2024 to September 2026, across 5,000+ orders.

10×

Online sales from the launch year (CA$49K in 2024) to the first full year (CA$503K in 2025).

#2 on Google

In Canada for “sublimation blanks canada”, the store's top product search, in summer 2025.

CA$150K

In online sales from people who arrived through Google search, organic and paid together, since 2024.

Buyers from ChatGPT

ChatGPT now sends shoppers to the store, and 1.74% of those visits order, more than the 1.56% from Google. It is early, ten orders so far, and it is where search is heading.

Figures from Shopify (sales by year and by last-click referrer) and Google Search Console, read on 26 September 2026. They are what happened for that business, not a promise of what will happen for yours. Rankings move: that search sits lower today than at its 2025 peak, which is exactly why we re-measure every week.

Why it carries over to the trades

A craft store and a roofing company are different businesses. What carries over is the discipline: find out exactly where you show up, fix the gaps, and count what it brought in.

A product search becomes a service search

“Sublimation blanks canada” is the craft world's “furnace repair Abbotsford”. The same work wins both: a page that answers that exact search, and a Google profile that matches it.

Product reviews become job reviews

Shoppers read reviews before they buy, and homeowners read them before they call. Google weighs them in the map pack too. For a trade that means asking every finished job for one, not only the happy ones.

Being named by ChatGPT, for your town

When someone asks an AI assistant for the best HVAC company near them, it names the businesses it can find, trust and cite. We check whether it names you, and work on the listings and pages it relies on.

Every sale traced, every call traced

We know which channel paid for itself at Craftera because every order is traced to its source. For a contractor the equivalent is calls traced to booked jobs, and your dashboard shows exactly that.

How we help

The method is the same for everyone: measure where you show up across your whole service area, do the work where you are missing, and measure again every week. What changes is where your work comes from.

Trades and service businesses

HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, restoration and the rest. Your Google profile rebuilt, pages for the parts of town where you do not appear, and a check on whether AI assistants name you. What it costs

General contractors and renovation firms

Homeowners search for a renovation contractor the way they search for a plumber, and the same three map results take most of the calls. The pages and the plan are written for how renovation work is actually sold. For renovation contractors

Subcontractors and commercial trades

If your work comes from tenders and general-contractor invitations rather than searches, map rankings matter less, and we will say so instead of selling you a plan. We are talking to subcontractors now about what would actually help: tell us how you win work.

Clinics, practices and studios

People search for a physiotherapist, a dentist or a vet the same way they search for a plumber: near me, now, from the map. The same method applies, measured the same way. For physiotherapy clinics

How we work with you

Measured, not promised

We report what happened, including the weeks it went the wrong way. Nobody controls Google's ranking, so nobody should promise you a position or a number of leads.

No meetings you do not want

Updates are recorded, so you watch them when it suits you. A call is there if you ask for one; it is not the default, because you are on the tools.

One business per trade or practice, per area

We will not work for two companies competing for the same streets. How we decide

You own everything

Your Google profile stays yours, and the pages we write stay on your site if you leave.

Start with your own map

The free scan shows where you show up across your area in about a minute, with the businesses taking the spots you are missing. It is the same method we use on the paid work.

Run my free scan

Or email us: info@getmerkat.com