Progress Report
Where every item in our signed plan stands today, what the data has changed about it, and what we found that was not in the plan at all.
Where we are: The groundwork is finished. We have your brand voice, a competitor review, sixteen months of your Google data, and a first measurement of how ChatGPT answers when someone looks for a photographer like you. That data confirmed most of the original plan and changed four items. It also turned up something significant that was never in the plan, which is set out in section 04.
Understanding your studio, your competition, and how you are found today.
Your answers are now the reference every piece of writing is checked against. It settles the things your site contradicts itself on, including how long you have been photographing weddings, which is now simply since 2005.
We measured which photographers ChatGPT actually recommends, rather than guessing. The answer was not the list we started with. Details are in the Competitor tab of your working document.
Every search that brought someone to your site since April 2025. This is what reshaped the plan below.
Written from searches that already reach your site, then adjusted after your notes on 620 Loft, low light and Orthodox weddings.
All 25 primary searches run. You were named in two. Both wins came from something you had already written down, which is exactly what the rest of this work is about.
The thirteen items in the agreement you signed, each checked against what the data now shows. Nine are unchanged. Four have changed.
Your site gives different lengths of experience and two different addresses. The experience figure is settled as since 2005. The address is not yet fixed.
Still valid, and still the highest impact item. The address lives in a settings area our current login cannot reach. See question 2 below.
Your FAQ has sixteen real questions and answers written as plain paragraphs, with no markup anywhere on the site to let AI lift them.
Still valid and unchanged.
Adding your real rating and review count so AI systems can cite them, plus a proper profile for you rather than appearing only as an author called "Susan".
More important than we first thought. One of your two ChatGPT wins came directly from what your couples say about you. Your reviews are working. They are simply not on your own pages.
Moving the concrete numbers to the top of your costs guide and refreshing figures that have not been updated since September 2024.
Confirmed and sharpened. That page has been seen in search 66,100 times in the last year. Across every cost related search we ran, ChatGPT only named photographers who publish a number.
Your privacy policy still contains unfilled template text, and four expected addresses return errors, including a reviews page.
Still valid, and the missing reviews page now matters more given item 3.
Your site presents itself four different ways.
Now backed by numbers. "Susan Shek Photography" brings 451 visits from Google against 321 for "Susan Shek". There is also a well known New York photographer with a similar first name, which makes consistency more valuable, not less.
Making sure the systems behind ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot are allowed to read your pages.
The plan recorded that Microsoft already had access. Our later testing found it being refused, which would mean Copilot cannot read you at all. We need to confirm which is correct from inside your hosting account, which is the one login we are still waiting on.
Your site publishes a guide file for AI systems that currently lists only five pages and five posts out of ninety one addresses, and leaves out your FAQ.
Still valid and unchanged.
Your service pages carry none.
Still valid and unchanged.
Your top wedding venues guide has no main heading and roughly 110 words before any usable fact.
This is now one of the most valuable pages you own. Google reports your pages appearing in its AI answers 45,500 times in three months, and this single page accounts for 11,123 of them. Nearly a quarter of your AI visibility sits on a page with no heading.
The agreement names eight pages to expand. The data says four of those eight are no longer the right targets.
| Page | Seen in search, 16 months | Our recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Event Photography | 24,691 | Expand, real demand |
| Cinematography | 23,133 | Expand, real demand |
| About | 25,194 | Expand as planned |
| Lotos Club | 765 | Lower priority |
| Headshots | 177 | Recommend dropping |
| Wedding Albums | 198 | Recommend dropping |
| New York Athletic Club | 8,045 | Currently deleted, see section 04 |
| Old Westbury | 4,806 | Currently deleted, see section 04 |
Headshots and Wedding Albums were seen 177 and 198 times in sixteen months. There is very little demand there to capture. Two others, New York Athletic Club and Old Westbury, are currently sitting in your site's trash. We would rather spend that time where the demand actually is.
Several pages have no main heading, and others have many competing ones.
Still valid and unchanged.
Six monthly reports showing month to month movement.
Expanded from 25 searches to 40 at no extra cost, and the first measurement is already done rather than pending. Reporting on ChatGPT has begun. Google Gemini and Google AI Overviews follow.
Two things came out of your Google data and your website that nobody could have seen when the plan was written.
Your site has nineteen deleted posts that people still find on Google. Together they brought roughly 1,125 visits in the last year, close to a tenth of all your search traffic. Their web addresses now send people to your homepage instead of the page they were looking for.
| Deleted post | Visits, 16 months |
|---|---|
| Burden Kahn Mansion Weddings | 279 |
| Marriage Proposals at 620 and 610 Loft and Garden | 278 |
| 12 Christian Wedding Traditions | 224 |
| New York Athletic Club Wedding | 62 |
| Best locations for a Central Park Wedding | 59 |
| Fourteen others | 223 |
This explains something we could not work out before. Your single best performing search on Google is people looking for a proposal photographer at 620 Loft and Garden. The post that answered it is one of the deleted ones, which is why your live 620 Loft page never mentions proposals.
ChatGPT recommends you for Rainbow Room weddings, and told us why: you specifically market your experience photographing there. That page is live and untouched. Burden Kahn and 620 Loft proposals were both deleted, and ChatGPT recommends other photographers for both.
This is the clearest evidence we have that the approach works. Where you say something plainly and leave the page alone, you get recommended.
This sits outside the signed agreement, which specifically excludes redirect cleanup. We are raising it because it is the largest recoverable thing we have found.
Two parts, and both are needed. Restoring the posts alone will not work, because the web addresses are separately set to forward to your homepage and would keep doing so.
We would restore the highest value posts, remove the forwarding rules pointing at your homepage, check nothing else breaks, and resubmit them to Google.
Estimated additional investment: [FEE TO BE CONFIRMED]. For comparison, the content involved brought around 1,125 visits from Google in the last year.
You have two pages each for Brooklyn venues, Capitale, Cipriani and Tribeca Rooftop. Each pair splits the credit for that venue instead of building one strong page.
Estimated additional investment: [FEE TO BE CONFIRMED].
There is a Cipriani venues guide written in February and never published. Cipriani is a venue where ChatGPT currently recommends other photographers.
Small job. Can be folded into the existing work.
Five things. The first two unlock the most.
Were those nineteen posts deleted on purpose?
Some may have been intentional and we will not put anything back that you removed for a reason. If it was not deliberate, we would recommend recovering at least the top three.
Your Cloudways login, and Administrator access in WordPress
Cloudways is the only account we are still waiting on, and it holds the answer on whether Microsoft's crawler can read you. Our WordPress login is currently an Editor, which cannot reach the settings where your business address is stored.
Approve the 40 tracked searches
In the Tracked Searches tab. Two questions only: have we missed a venue you shoot often, and have we included one you no longer do.
Confirm your review count and rating
We record 103 Google reviews at five stars. We do not publish a figure we have not checked with you.
Confirm the swap on the thin pages
We would rather expand your Event and Film pages, which are seen tens of thousands of times, than Headshots and Albums, which are seen a few hundred.