Professional Photographers of America Press Release 26/10/04

325 per day. 9750 per month. 117,000 per year.* That’s how many times people are conducting searches for photographers on the “Find A Photographer” search engine at www.ppa.com. These numbers are staggering! On average 19,107 names are included in response to these searches every single day.

“Find A Photographer” is an awesome indicator of the massive impact the Internet has had on how consumers and businesses look for professional photography. Several years ago when PPA took most referral requests over the phone, the number of monthly requests peaked at just over 1,000. “Find A Photographer” does that in less than four days!

“We wish we could quantify how many jobs PPA members book thanks to ‘Find A Photographer’ referrals,” comments PPA Membership Director Al Hopper, “but we do know the service is working for them. One member recently told me he picked up three weddings in the past six months because of the search engine.” But it’s not just brides who use the Internet to find a photographer. “Much of the feedback we get regarding ‘Find A Photographer’ shows that users are businesses looking for out of town photographers,” explains David Mithofer, PPA’s manager of member services.

In the last six months the average number of queries has risen 14%; PPA anticipates that it will continue to rise, creating great benefits for members. In September PPA implemented an enhancement to the search engine. A member may now indicate a metro area in her record, allowing her listing to appear on the results page of any query conducted for that metro area.

Inclusion in the “Find A Photographer” search engine database comes with membership for PPA members in the Professional Active, Life and International categories. For information on PPA, go to www.ppa.com or contact [email protected] or 800-786-6277.

*From data collected September 2003 through August 2004.