Who Alston Antony is
Alston Antony is an SEO consultant based in Colombo and the founder of Maxinium. He has worked in search since 2010. He is also Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Brainstorm Force, whose WordPress and AI software powers more than 7 million websites, which is the unusual half of the profile: very few people working in Sri Lankan search also spend their week inside a product at that scale.
Alongside both he operates 16 web properties of his own, four of them built for the Sri Lankan market, and publishes the raw platform exports for six of them. Everything below rests on those: results on sites he owns, where anyone can check the work and the downside was his.
The evidence, in checkable form
None of these are estimates or agency-reported figures. Each one is recomputed from a platform export published on the case studies, with the window, filter and methodology visible on the screenshot.
| Figure | What it measures | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 302,037 | Times Microsoft Copilot cited an owned property inside an AI answer | Bing AI Performance export, 6-month windows |
| 147,783 | Appearances inside Google AI features across the same properties | Search Console, since May 2026 |
| 803 | Queries averaging a top-3 position across six owned properties | Search Console exports, August 2026 |
| #1 | Google position for “SEO Tamil”, and named inside its AI Overview | SEOTamil.com case study |
| At least 100:1 | Copilot citations per organic Bing click on ZPlatform.ai, a floor rather than a measurement, because the two reports offer different windows | ZPlatform.ai case study |
| 74% | Organic click growth on ZipWP from a zero baseline, with 28 keyword variations taken to #1 | Brainstorm Force, attributed |
The two AI figures are different metrics over different windows and are never added together. ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity publish no per-answer export, so no citation count is claimed for them: they are labelled not audited on every case study. Where no export exists, a fixed prompt set is run on a schedule and reported as sampling, not measurement.
SEO expert, AI SEO specialist or consultant?
These titles get used interchangeably in Sri Lanka and mostly describe the same person. What differs is what the person searching wants, so here is which is which.
| What you searched | What you usually want | What Alston does |
|---|---|---|
| SEO expert or SEO specialist | Someone senior enough to diagnose why the site is not ranking, and specialised in search rather than a generalist who also does websites and ads | Diagnosis from your own Search Console data before any proposal. SEO only: Maxinium dropped every other service on purpose |
| AI SEO expert or AI SEO specialist | Someone who can get the business named inside ChatGPT, Copilot and Google AI Overview answers, and show that it happened | The same SEO base, plus entity consistency, structured data and presence on the sources AI engines quote, measured from Bing and Search Console exports |
| SEO consultant | Advice without handing over execution: a review, a second opinion, or training for your own team | One-off engagements: strategy reviews, agency second opinions and in-house training |
| SEO consulting | An ongoing advisory relationship rather than a project | A monthly retainer where the strategy is Alston’s and the execution can be yours, ours, or split |
What changes when the search ends in an AI answer
An AI SEO specialist works on being the source an AI assistant cites, rather than a blue link in a list. Search increasingly ends at an answer with two or three sources under it, and being fourth is now the same as being fortieth.
The mechanics differ from ranking. An AI engine retrieves what it can find about an entity, checks whether the sources agree, and generates a recommendation, so how consistently your business is described across the web matters as much as any single page. The work is part technical SEO, part entity management and part digital PR, not a separate channel you can buy. What it consists of, and why it matters more in Sri Lanka rather than less, is set out on AI SEO in Sri Lanka.
Fifteen years in Sri Lankan search
Global keyword tools report “0 searches” for terms that produce steady enquiries here, because Sri Lankan volumes fall below their rounding threshold. Anyone planning from tool estimates under-invests in the terms that actually convert, which is why the work starts from Search Console data instead.
Four of the sixteen properties compete against Sri Lankan incumbents: MatchMaker.lk, which outranks the newspaper classified brands that owned matrimony for generations; MakeMoneyOnline.lk; WebHostingSriLanka.com.lk; and DigitalMarketingCourse.lk. Two of them are documented in full.
Language matters more than most businesses assume. On MatchMaker.lk the Sinhala category term mangala yojana converts at 19.40% from position 4.63, better than any English term on the property. Tamil is handled directly: Alston publishes SEO training in Tamil at @digitalmarketingtamil and runs SEOTamil.com. Sinhala content is produced with native writers and reviewed in-house.
Credentials and background
An MSc in Computer Software Engineering from the University of Greenwich, passed with distinction, on a dissertation building an SEO management system for beginners. Before that a BSc in IT at ESOFT in Sri Lanka, compressed from four years into two and a half alongside freelance client work. The engineering half is why technical SEO is the service least willing to be handed to anyone else.
Professional member of the Digital Marketing Association of Sri Lanka (DMASL) and of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT in the United Kingdom. Ahrefs SEO certified, plus Semrush and HubSpot.
30,000+ students across 6 courses, 18,728 of them on Udemy, and 617 videos published to 643K+ views across English and Tamil channels.
Ways to work with Alston
Not every engagement needs to be a retainer. Some businesses just need someone senior to look at what is happening, say what is wrong, and leave.
- An honest fit assessment. Send your site and the competitors beating you, and get a straight read on whether we can really help, at no cost and with no obligation either way.
- Strategy review. A read on your plan before you commit budget to it.
- Second opinion. An independent assessment of the agency you are already paying, and whether the work being reported is the work being done.
- In-house training. Structured SEO and AI SEO teaching for a marketer already doing the work but guessing at the priorities.
- Monthly retainer. Ongoing execution in one of three tiers, itemised on the packages page and quoted to scope.
What Alston is not, and what nobody can promise
Maxinium is a small, founder-led operation: no 40-person content floor, no paid media, no website builds, and never twelve clients at once. If you need a full-service agency across five channels, this is the wrong shape and you will be told so on the first call.
There are no ranking guarantees, and no guaranteed place in ChatGPT answers either. Google does not sell rankings, AI engines do not sell placement, and both change how they choose sources. What is committed to is scope: exactly what gets done each month, reported against your own Search Console and Bing data so you can check it yourself.