Methodology

How TatSeek turns photos, studio details and prices into a catalogue you can search and compare — the rules behind every tag, estimate, ranking and city page. If a number on the site looks surprising, this page is where it comes from.

How tattoos are tagged

Every photo is described on fixed axes: style, technique, subject, placement, colour, size and complexity, plus a few flags (healed, cover-up). The words come from a closed vocabulary — nobody can invent a new tag on the fly. See the vocabulary.
Tags are drafted with AI assistance from the image and then checked. Where a photo could honestly belong to two styles, it gets both; where the classification is unclear, we leave it out rather than guess.
When a photo has several styles or subjects, one is marked as primary — it decides the photo’s breadcrumb and first chip.
Named characters or people (“Depicts”) are only shown when the identification is confident.

How artist and studio specialities are derived

The styles and subjects on a profile are calculated from its published, tagged work — not only from what the artist says about themselves. A style or subject is shown once it appears in at least two pieces and at least 5% of that portfolio, so one unusual piece does not become a “speciality”. An artist’s location is the location of their studio.

What gets into the catalogue

Only photographs of real, finished tattoo work, judged on execution and on whether the photo shows the work clearly. Flash sheets, AI images, screenshots and duplicates are left out. Content standards.

How prices are calculated

Every studio page shows four size tiers — Small, Medium, Large and Sleeve — as ranges, and says where they come from:

Published or confirmed — the studio’s own prices, from its website or confirmed to us.
Estimate — calculated from an hourly rate (the studio’s, or a local market rate) multiplied by typical session times: about 0.5–1.25 hours for Small, 1.5–2.75 for Medium, 3.5–7.5 for Large and 8–18+ for a sleeve, rounded to 50. A published shop minimum always sets the floor of the Small tier.

Artists can carry their own rate; otherwise they inherit the studio’s. The price and time shown on a photo page place that piece in a tier by its size and complexity — it is a planning range, never a quote. Aggregate figures in guides and on style pages are medians across studios and always say how many studios they rest on.

How lists are sorted

Tattoo grids — newest first. A small number of photos picked by our editors for clarity and quality may be shown first.
“Best rated” studios — a weighted average of the studio’s Google rating: ratings with few reviews are pulled toward a neutral 3.5, so a 4.5 from 200 reviews ranks above a 5.0 from two.
No paid placement — nobody can pay to rank higher today. If sponsored placement is ever introduced, it will be clearly labelled as such.

When a city gets its own page in search

Every city with a studio has a page, but it is only offered to search engines once it can genuinely answer “tattoo studios in [city]”: at least two studios, and either eight artists with published work or 100 photos. Thinner pages stay available to visitors and open to search automatically as the city grows.

How current the information is

Key studio fields — address, contact, hours, prices, rating — carry the date they were last set or confirmed. Ratings are mirrored from Google with the date recorded. Counts on the site (photos, artists, studios, cities) are calculated live.

Where AI is used — and where it isn’t

AI helps draft tags, titles, alt text and descriptions, which are then checked; it helps draft guides, which are edited and fact-checked before publication. It is never used to create tattoo images, write reviews or invent studio facts or prices.

Last updated September 30, 2026

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