A couple's 30 buying questions produced 399 citations. 58% went to photographers' own sites, and weddingwire.com and theknot.com were the directories cited.
Questions asked
30
Citations read
399
First-party share
58%
Third-party share
13%
Entry bar
47
Median cited site
35
The study asked 30 questions in three bands: 5 general, 15 medium and 10 specific. It used ChatGPT and Google organic results, with 1 run per question and no city, so the questions are national. That gave 399 citations on 262 domains.
A general question is like "best wedding photographers". A specific one adds constraints such as a budget, a style, a second shooter or turnaround time.
Photographers' own sites took 58% of citations. Third-party sources (directories, review sites and publishers) took 13%, established vendors and marketplaces took 15%, and forums and social took 13%.
weddingwire.com was cited on 13 of 30 questions and theknot.com on 11. These are the two directories. yelp.com shows up as a review site. The forum and social domains are reddit.com, facebook.com and instagram.com.
The photographers cited are small studios' own sites, for example allthefeels.club and twaphoto.com. Each was cited on a few questions, and the list is long and flat.
| Type | Share of citations | Cited examples |
|---|---|---|
| Small providers' own sites | 58% | allthefeels.club (3 of 30), twaphoto.com (3 of 30), bhuvanadhinesh.com (2 of 30), french-touch-photography.com (2 of 30), helenaandlaurent.com (2 of 30) |
| Established vendors and marketplaces | 15% | caratsandcake.com (3 of 30), partyslate.com (3 of 30), fearlessphotographers.com (2 of 30), blog.overthemoon.com (2 of 30), fstoppers.com (2 of 30) |
| Directories | 11% | weddingwire.com (13 of 30), theknot.com (11 of 30), zola.com (3 of 30) |
| Review sites | 1% | yelp.com (4 of 30) |
| Publishers and guides | 0% | en.wikipedia.org (1 of 30) |
| Forums and social | 13% | reddit.com (16 of 30), facebook.com (14 of 30), instagram.com (6 of 30), youtube.com (5 of 30), forums.theknot.com (2 of 30) |
With both engines pooled, own-site share is 31% on general questions, 64% on medium and 61% on specific. ChatGPT goes from 28% on general to 77% on specific. Google organic goes from 32% to 53%. Both engines cite own sites more on specific questions than on general ones.
Third-party share is 22% on general questions, 14% on medium and 6% on specific. The directories weddingwire.com and theknot.com sit in that third-party group.
| Question type | Questions | Citations | First-party | Third-party | ChatGPT first-party | Google organic first-party |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| General | 5 | 59 | 31% | 22% | 28% | 32% |
| Medium | 15 | 209 | 64% | 14% | 72% | 59% |
| Specific | 10 | 131 | 61% | 6% | 77% | 53% |
| Both engines | 30 | 399 | 58% | 13% | 66% | 53% |
On all 30 questions the entry bar is 47 and the median cited site scores 35. The bar is built from 238 scored domains.
Own pages get cited here, so the next step is to score a page with the free AEO checker on how easily an engine can quote it.
Median site
32
Bar
23
Content share
73%
Tested site
17
Editorial verdict, as of 2026-10-02: Open. This is a local market. The median cited site scores 32 and the bar is 23. 73% of cited sources were articles about the category and 27% were a photographer's own site.
Content share is the share of cited sources that were articles about the category (73% here), and a vendor's own page does not count. A tested site scored 17 against a bar of 23. It cleared the bar on 0 of 5 questions, and on 5 of 5 questions a site below the bar was cited anyway.
Make your portfolio and city pages strong, as photographers' own sites make up 27% of cited sources. Complete the wedding directory profiles too, which sit above you in the cited set.
91 domains were cited across the 5 questions; these are the most-cited, each with one page the engines read.
The free audit shows whether AI engines can find and recommend your business.