NYC TOURISM + CONVENTIONSSELECTED WORK
SEARCH AUDIT AND STRATEGY
The project
NYC Tourism’s official site reached page 1 on only 4 of its 15 priority searches. At Hudson Creative, I audited those searches, found why travel blogs and publishers were winning them, and wrote a content and technical SEO plan for the NYC Tourism team.
What I did
I ran the priority searches live, compared the official hub element by element with the pages outranking it, ranked five recommendations and wrote playbooks for four search features. When the team asked follow-up questions, I ran the same searches in five other cities and tested the itinerary markup.
Auditing priority searches
On May 11, 2026, I ran NYC Tourism’s 15 highest-priority searches, recorded who ranked for each one, and gave each search a status and a recommended action. The site won only three, and one of those was its own name.
Rankings shifted between the dated checks, but the priority content hubs stayed out of the top positions even when the homepage appeared.
Google’s modules fill the screen. The first organic result is capturencrave.com, a small travel blog. nyctourism.com is absent.
secretnyc.co at #1 and nycgovparks.org at #2, with Time Out and Eventbrite below. nyctourism.com is absent.
capturencrave.com at #1. The AI Overview cites Tripadvisor and Capture ‘n Crave.
Comparing the competing pages
On June 22, 2026, I compared the top three results for “things to do in NYC” with the official /things-to-do/ hub, element by element. The only NYC Tourism page on page 1 was the homepage, at position 7.
The ranking guides answered the search on one page. The official hub was a card grid that sent visitors elsewhere, with no author, update date or markup. I recommended rebuilding it as a complete guide with a named author and a visible update date.
“Things to do in NYC”: top 3 results against the official hub, June 22, 2026
| Element | Top 3 ranking pages | nyctourism.com /things-to-do/ |
|---|---|---|
| Page title | Specific and descriptive | Descriptive |
| H1 heading | Matches the search | “Things to Do” only |
| Length | 2,500 to 4,000 words of prose | About 2,000 words, mostly card titles |
| Format | Numbered or themed guide | Card grid linking to other pages |
| Schema markup | BlogPosting, Article, BreadcrumbList, Person | None detected |
| Named author | Yes | None |
| Last-updated date | Visible | None |
Five recommendations
I ranked five changes, starting with the page rebuild most likely to move the priority searches, and named the search features NYC Tourism could not win and should not chase.
- Rebuild the flagship pages as editorial guides
/things-to-do/, the five borough pages, /attractions/, /restaurants/ and /broadway/, each with a named author, a visible update date and 2,000 to 3,000 words.
- Start a weekly “this weekend” article
One URL, rewritten every Thursday from NYC Tourism’s own events data. Time Out wins this search with the same approach.
- Write the itineraries nobody else is writing
3 days, 5 days, one day and first time in NYC. Travel blogs own these searches, and no tourism site is on page 1.
- Get the schema foundation in
Organization and WebPage on every template, then type-specific markup for events, hotels, restaurants, attractions and articles.
- Decide on Google Things to Do
NYC Tourism can’t enter the bookable carousel itself. It can help member tour operators in, or fund ads for a chosen group of them.
What the audit said to leave alone
- FAQ dropdowns
- NYC Tourism isn’t eligible. Keep FAQ markup only as a signal for AI Overviews
- HowTo results
- Discontinued by Google
- Top Stories
- Reserved for verified news publishers
- Shopping results
- NYC Tourism has no store
- Bookable tour searches
- “Statue of Liberty tickets” and “NYC bus tours” belong to booking sites
Playbooks for four search features
A search for “things to do in NYC” returns an AI Overview, a tours carousel, a Knowledge Panel, People Also Ask and Reddit threads before the first ordinary link.
I rated every search feature for how likely NYC Tourism was to win it and wrote playbooks for the four worth the investment, each with a live screenshot and a first action. For Images, I pulled the 50 pages with the most image search clicks from Search Console.
Five-city comparison
After a June 23, 2026 summit, NYC Tourism’s team asked whether blogs beat official sites everywhere. On July 14 and 15, I ran the same searches logged out in Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Dallas and Miami and captured a dated screenshot of each.
The official tourism site ranked first for weekend searches in Chicago, Las Vegas, Dallas and Miami, and third in Los Angeles. NYC Tourism was absent from the New York weekend results, so the finding became the case for a dedicated weekly weekend page.
choosechicago.com at #1. The AI Overview cites Choose Chicago twice.
visitlasvegas.com at #1, though its page title still reads 2025.
visitdallas.com at #1, Eventbrite at #2, D Magazine at #3.
miamiandbeaches.com at #1, Time Out at #2.
Validating itinerary markup
The Rich Results Test did not report markup that was present in the Harlem itinerary’s page source, so I revised the audit to separate markup being present from a page being eligible for a search feature.
The source had two errors: duplicate @id values and a reference to a missing node. I wrote replacement markup and tested it on July 14, 2026. It returned three valid items and no errors.
Audit and plan
Written audit for the SEO and AEO team
The package included the 15-search status board, a priority query inventory in 11 categories, five ranked recommendations, four search feature playbooks and a follow-up with 14 dated screenshots and tested markup.