How IPD works
How local starting-price ranges are calculated
IPD uses published starting prices as a discovery aid. A lower or higher starting price is not a statement about a photographer's quality.
1. We use comparable profile observations
For a city-and-event calculation, IPD counts active public photographer profiles with a valid published starting price, a primary business location in that city, and the selected event in Events Covered. Nationwide status and service-area claims do not manufacture local price observations.
2. Local ranges start at 9 usable observations
With 9–14 local observations, IPD labels the result an indicative local sample. With 15 or more, it is labelled an established local sample. Below 9, the visitor filter can fall back to state-level data and then national data when enough comparable observations exist. A dedicated city pricing page is not created from a fallback.
3. Percentiles define the bands
The lower boundary is based on the 25th percentile and the higher boundary on the 75th percentile, with practical 5,000 or 10,000 rounding. This is more resistant to unusually high or low listings than using a simple arithmetic mean.
4. Calculations are rechecked monthly and invalidated sooner when relevant profile data changes
IPD caches one minimal, read-only pricing source inventory for 30 days. A photographer signup, deactivation or deletion, approved primary-location change, or a change to starting price or Events Covered invalidates that source cache earlier. The next pricing request then refreshes the inventory and recalculates market ranges from current published profile data. Public crawling can trigger only a read-only cache refresh; it does not write pricing snapshots or alter photographer data.
5. Starting price is not package price
Photographers may define their starting price against different scopes, hours, team sizes and deliverables. Until IPD collects event-specific package structures, these figures are described only as published starting prices, not average wedding package costs.
Price amount and price band do not improve organic rank
Charging more, charging less, or falling into a particular local price band does not improve a photographer's Performance Score, verification status, organic ranking, Featured placement or awards. Separately, the established ipd-ranking-v1 profile-completeness check gives credit for publishing useful starting-price information at all; it does not use the amount.