Progress Report
Every problem we have found, how we know it is real, why it matters for how AI systems and Google talk about you, and exactly what we would do about it. All figures cover 1 January to 20 August 2026, which is the most recent data Google has.
How to read this. Each item has four parts. The problem in plain terms. How we know, with the real numbers and where they came from, so you can judge for yourself whether it is worth fixing. Why it matters, meaning what it actually changes about how AI systems and Google treat you. What we will do, as concrete steps. Every item is also labelled as either part of your original agreement or something we found afterwards. Where something is still unconfirmed we say so rather than dressing it up.
Following the new writing. Every piece of copy we draft goes into your existing shared document, Susan Shek Photography, as its own tab named for the item it belongs to. Ten tabs are there now, covering items 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 13 below, and each of those items links straight to its tab. You can comment inline, rewrite anything in your own words, and nothing goes live until you have signed it off. Anywhere you see a bracket, that is a fact only you can give us, and we will not print a number you have not confirmed.
Your plan was written from one source. It has since been checked against four more.
| When | What we looked at | What it told us |
|---|---|---|
| Jul 20 | Full technical review of your website Your original plan came entirely from this. | Thirteen items, eight named pages. |
| Aug 17 | Google Search Console Sixteen months, the full history Google keeps. | 12,889 clicks from 2.7 million impressions. Showed which pages people actually want. |
| Aug 18 | Live ChatGPT testing Twenty five real questions. | You were named in two, and it showed the rule behind every answer. |
| Aug 19 | Inside your WordPress site | Nineteen deleted posts still earning traffic, and 141 redirects behind them. |
| Aug 22 | Google Analytics Same window, January to August. | ChatGPT already sends you more visitors than Bing. Nothing measures enquiries. |
| Aug 22 | Search Console, 2026 to date Jan 1 to Aug 20, the latest Google has. | 5.08K clicks from 1.08M appearances, average position 15. You rank better than a year ago and receive fewer visits. |
Five items. These are the difference between being recommended and being overlooked.
Nineteen articles sit in your website's trash. Their addresses do not return an error, they actively 301 redirect the visitor to your homepage.
How we know. So far this year, between 1 January and 20 August 2026, these nineteen addresses earned 302 visits and 90,521 appearances in Google. That is roughly one visit in every seventeen your whole website receives, going to articles that no longer exist. Seventeen of the nineteen are still earning visits right now. The three largest are Burden Kahn Mansion at 279 clicks, Marriage Proposals at 620 and 610 Loft and Garden at 278, and 12 Christian Wedding Traditions at 224. Your Yoast Redirects tool holds 141 redirects, and one chains twice: convent of the sacred heart wedding, then burden kahn mansion weddings, then your homepage.
We have now measured this, rather than assumed it. Inside Search Console we filtered each search by the page Google attributes it to, then requested each address directly to see what the server does. Every one returns a redirect to your homepage. Burden Kahn Mansion: 109 visits and 5,954 appearances so far in 2026. That is 109 people who searched, clicked your result, and landed on your homepage instead of the article they wanted. Marriage Proposals at 620 and 610 Loft and Garden: 53 visits. Old Westbury Hebrew Congregation: 1,246 appearances and not one click. New York Athletic Club: 23 visits. 12 Christian Wedding Traditions: 33,538 appearances and 19 visits, and Google ranks you fourth for that search. Ranking fourth and getting no clicks is not normal. It happens because the click does not reach the article.
One thing still open, and it does not change the decision. We cannot see from WordPress the exact date each article was removed. What we can see is that the loss is happening now, in 2026, not only historically.
* Scoped in your original statement of work (item 4)
Every ChatGPT answer to a cost question named photographers who publish a number. Those who do not publish were left out entirely.
How we know. All four cost questions in our live test returned only photographers with a published figure. Two competitors publish theirs at $20,000 and $14,000. Your cost guide has 24,382 appearances and 46 visits so far this year, and it is one of the pages AI assistants most often send people to. You told us in your brand questions: $15,000 for photography, up to $20,000 with video, for full day wedding collections.
There is a price on the page already, and that is exactly the problem. We read it again to be sure. The page says “the average price for wedding photographers in New York City is between $8,500 and $30,000”. That is a figure for the whole city, not for you. Nowhere on the page do you say what you charge. So a machine reading it learns what a New York wedding costs on average and still cannot answer the question it was asked, which is what Susan Shek charges. That is why it names photographers who state their own number and leaves you out. The page was also last updated in September 2024.
→ Read and comment on the draft copy in your shared document, tab “Item 2: Pricing page”.
* Scoped in your original statement of work (item 3)
You asked why ChatGPT does not pick up your reviews. It does. It just cannot find them on susanshek.com.
How we know. One of the only two questions where ChatGPT named you was answered because of what your couples wrote about you being calm and taking charge. It found that language on a third party review site. Meanwhile your reviews page and testimonials page both 404. Across eleven competitors, not one publishes a review count. You have 103 reviews at 5.0 and none of it is on your own pages.
→ Read and comment on the draft copy in your shared document, tab “Item 3: Your reviews”.
* Scoped in your original statement of work (item 7)
Anthropic's ClaudeBot is refused by the bot protection at your host before it ever reaches your website.
How we know. The request returns a 403 from a stock server error page sitting underneath Cloudflare, which is characteristic of the Cloudways bot protection layer rather than anything on your site. Your agreement also states Microsoft's Bingbot already has access, while our review found it blocked too. Both cannot be true. We now have Cloudways access and can settle it.
* Scoped in your original statement of work (item 1)
Your site publishes two different addresses and four different lengths of experience.
How we know. Your footer and Google Business Profile say 401 Park Avenue South. Your schema, the structured data underneath the site that AI systems read directly, says 287 Park Avenue South. Separately the site claims 30+ years, 19 years, two decades and a decade in different places, while your schema says 2005. You told us your first wedding was in 2005, which settles the experience question. The address was never asked.
→ Read and comment on the draft copy in your shared document, tab “Item 5: Your business facts”.
Pages that already attract people. To be clear, we are not rewriting your venue pages. They are good pages and they are in your voice. We are adding the few things that are missing.
* Scoped in your original statement of work (item 10)
Your venues guide drives more of your appearances in Google's AI Overviews than any other page, and it has no main heading at all.
How we know. This page accounts for 11,816 of the 48,600 times you have appeared in Google's AI answers. That is 24.3% from a single page. Google only began reporting this in May 2026, so that is roughly three months of data, and it reports appearances rather than clicks. Across all of search it earns 553 clicks from 347,958 appearances. It is also the page AI assistants send the most visitors to after your homepage, where they stay over a minute. It runs 2,057 words with no H1 and roughly 110 words of atmosphere before the first fact.
→ Read and comment on the draft copy in your shared document, tab “Item 6: Your venues guide”.
More people click your result for "620 loft and garden proposal" than any other search you appear in. The page they arrive at never mentions proposals.
How we know. So far this year that search has earned 13 visits from 253 appearances, a 5.1 percent click rate, which is roughly ten times your site average of 0.5 percent. It is also slipping: it now sits at position 9.3, having been at 5.8. The related search “620 loft and garden” sits at position 25.6 with 511 appearances and no visits at all. They land on your 620 Loft page, which has 10 visits from 2,075 appearances this year. It is genuinely well written and sounds like you, but it is entirely about weddings. The article that used to answer the proposal search is one of the nineteen in the trash.
→ Read and comment on the draft copy in your shared document, tab “Item 7: Proposals at 620 Loft”.
You told us dark venues are a speciality and you want more of that work. It appears nowhere on your website.
How we know. When we asked ChatGPT how a couple should vet a photographer, it told them to ask how the photographer handles dark churches and candlelit receptions. A competitor won a cathedral question partly because they had written about working in low light. It is an active filter and you are silent on it.
→ Read and comment on the draft copy in your shared document, tab “Item 8: Low light and dark venues”.
It reads as though somebody else wrote it about you. Your 620 Loft page does the opposite and is genuinely lovely.
How we know. The Plaza page says "Susan Shek has chosen this hotel as one of our top recommended venues". Your 620 Loft page says "I've photographed couples as they walk hand in hand past the reflecting pool". The Plaza page has 105,404 impressions, so it is worth getting right.
→ Read and comment on the draft copy in your shared document, tab “Item 9: Your Plaza page”.
* Scoped in your original statement of work (item 2)
You have sixteen real questions with real answers, written as plain paragraphs.
How we know. Your FAQ page carries sixteen genuine question and answer pairs and emits no FAQ markup at all. We checked the page directly. The content is already there and already good.
The good news is that the pattern already exists on your site. Exactly one page does carry proper FAQ markup: your New York Athletic Club article, which has three questions marked up correctly. So this is not built from nothing. We are extending something your site already does once, onto the page where it matters most.
→ Read and comment on the draft copy in your shared document, tab “Item 10: A new FAQ question”.
* Scoped in your original statement of work (item 12)
Some pages have no main heading, and one has fifteen competing with each other.
How we know. No H1 at all: Top Wedding Venues, Event Photography, Headshots, Wedding Albums. Too many: Services has fifteen, FAQ has four, About has three.
→ Read and comment on the draft copy in your shared document, tab “Item 11: Page titles”.
* Scoped in your original statement of work (item 8)
Yoast generates an llms.txt file on your site, the emerging standard for telling AI systems what your site contains. It is almost empty.
How we know. The file lists five pages and five posts out of ninety one addresses, and omits the FAQ entirely.
Real, worth doing, but they will not move your visibility on their own.
* Scoped in your original statement of work (item 11)
Two pages are shown constantly and convert badly because they are too thin. Two others in your plan have almost no demand at all.
How we know. Corporate event photography has 24,691 impressions and 14 clicks. Cinematography has 23,133 and 7, and its heading introduces a different business name. Against that, Headshots has 177 impressions and Wedding Albums 198.
→ Read and comment on the draft copy in your shared document, tab “Item 13: Event and cinematography”.
* Scoped in your original statement of work (item 9)
Your service pages carry none of the structured data that tells a machine what you sell.
* Scoped in your original statement of work (item 6)
The site presents itself as Susan Shek Photography, Susan Shek Photography Inc., Shek Studios on the cinematography page, and Susan Shek Photo + Video.
How we know. Four variants found across the site. Your own Google data shows which is strongest: "susan shek photography" earns 451 clicks against 321 for "susan shek". You told us "Susan Shek is perfect", which we read as how you want to be known day to day.
* Scoped in your original statement of work (item 5)
Your published privacy policy still contains unfilled template text that any visitor can read.
How we know. The live policy contains "[Insert Time Period, e.g., 7 years]" and "[Insert Email Address]". Four addresses 404: terms, reviews, testimonials and journal. Seven internal links point at redirecting addresses, including the Journal link in your main navigation.
We can see people arrive at your enquiry page. We cannot see what happens next.
How we know. Your Inquire page was visited by 671 people between January and August this year. Google Analytics records zero completed enquiries across that entire period, and your confirmation page shows almost no visits. That almost certainly means the form never triggered any tracking, rather than that nobody wrote to you.
Seven unchanged, six moved. Nothing dropped without being replaced.
| # | Original item | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fix conflicting business details | Unchanged, still the most important. Now item 5 above. |
| 2 | FAQ schema | Unchanged. Now item 10. |
| 3 | Review, rating and Person schema | More important than we thought. One of your two ChatGPT wins came from reviews. Now item 3. |
| 4 | Restructure the pricing guide | Sharpened. Now item 2. |
| 5 | Broken and placeholder content | Unchanged. Now item 16. |
| 6 | Standardise the business name | Unchanged, now backed by your data. Now item 15. |
| 7 | Unblock ClaudeBot, confirm Bingbot | Now actionable. Cloudways access is in place. Now item 4. |
| 8 | Complete the llms.txt file | Unchanged. Now item 12. |
| 9 | Service and Offer schema | Unchanged. Now item 14. |
| 10 | Restructure the venues guide | Moved up. A quarter of all your Google AI impressions. Now item 6. |
| 11 | Expand eight thin pages | Changed, needs a conversation. Two have no demand, two are in the trash. See section 06. |
| 12 | Fix page headings | Unchanged. Now item 11. |
| 13 | Monthly visibility reporting | Expanded at no extra cost. Twenty five questions became forty, first measurement done. |
Your plan committed us to eight specific pages. Your own data says that list needs a second look.
| Page | Impressions | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Corporate event photography | 24,691 | Strong demand. Keep. |
| About | 25,194 | Keep. |
| Cinematography | 23,133 | Strong demand. Keep. |
| Lotos Club | Photographs only | Keep. 119 photographs, no text. |
| New York Athletic Club | 3,465 YTD | Article in the trash, but you have a second live page with 1,212 words. Expand that one instead. |
| Old Westbury | 2,373 YTD | In the trash. Checking whether a live equivalent exists. |
| Headshots | 177 | Almost no demand. |
| Wedding albums | 198 | Almost no demand. |
Our recommendation, and it is your call. A straight swap at no extra cost. Keep the four that are working. Restore and expand the two in the trash if the deletion was accidental. Put the effort that would have gone into headshots and albums into your venue pages and your reviews instead. To be clear, you never asked us to drop headshots or albums. This is our reading of your data, not your instruction.
Two things we found that fall outside the agreement you signed, because nobody could see them from the outside of your website.
Repointing every old address at a relevant page instead of your homepage, then bringing back the three articles that carry most of the value. This is smaller than it first looked. Several of the nineteen turn out to have a live equivalent already on your site, which means a short redirect rather than restoring anything.
For scale, that content has brought 302 visits and 90,521 appearances between January and August this year alone. Our next step is to audit all 141 redirects, and to check each deleted article for a live equivalent, then report exactly what is needed. We would rather understand the full picture before putting a number on it, and we will come back to you with one.
Originally not in scope.
Building the reviews page your site links to but does not have, and placing your review wording on the venue and service pages where it will do the most work.
Originally not in scope.
Five things. Now that we have full access to your website, these answers are the only thing holding the work up.
Were the nineteen articles deleted and redirected on purpose?
Nothing gets restored until you tell us. This is the largest single item in the report.
Which address is correct?
We believe 401 Park Avenue South, matching your footer and Google listing. We would like that confirmed rather than assumed.
Your current review counts.
We will not publish a rating we have not verified with you.
Approve the forty searches we will track, and your privacy policy details.
The searches are in your shared document. We also need a contact email and how long you keep client records.
Your decision on the eight pages.
Whether we can swap headshots and albums for work with more demand behind it, at no change to your fee.