super tags & tagging

[JBross]

I am new to Alamy although not to stock sites overall. I read somewhere that when super tags were introduced, they had a negative effect on some of the listings and that the algorithm needed to be tweaked. I am somewhat reluctant to declare super tags, but I am also concerned that this will affect the discoverability of my images. What advice/experiences have contributors had.

 

Thank you for your time and consideration.

 

Regards,

 

J. Ross

[NYCat]

My recent testing has had the super tags by far the strongest with caption and regular tag similar with the tag being a bit stronger. Just my own results. You can play around for yourself but I think this is what Alamy has said they intended. The recent seeming "rerank" seemed to me to be a result of the search engine finally doing what it was supposed to do. I definitely could be wrong about that.

 

Paulette

[MariaJ]

I've tested my own images in searches and the ones with super tags rank far higher than those without.  If it's an important keyword, I would make it a super tag.

 

Maria

[Cryptoprocta]

At the beginning, it had an adverse effect, but now it seems to be better, though it doesn't trump everything.

I have no answer, but I found some very high-ranking images which had no keywords at all, so can only surmise they belonged to a very high seller.

 

I agree with geogphotos, just like we shouldn't add irrelevant or marginal tags to improve our alleged 'discoverability' (what's the point in being discovered in an irrelevant search?), there's no point in adding all ten supertags if they don't really deserve that importance.

 

All that said, I don't see any advantage in sales for my files which I've updated compared to those I've still go get round to, but I generally (not quite always) find my files need a while 'maturing' before selling.

[spacecadet]

I'd have "orford castle" as a superphrase as well. I forget whether it helps to have "orford" and "castle" separately as well, but I usually would.

[Rick Lewis]

13 hours ago, geogphotos said:

Maybe the thought process should be something like this for a picture of Orford castle in Suffolk, East Anglia, England

 

Supertags: Orford, Castle, Suffolk, East Anglia, England, 

 

But not: Britain, British, English, UK, United Kingdom, UNLESS the picture is good enough to stand a chance of a sale for 'British castle' 'English castle', 'UK castle' etc - is the picture good enough to represent a national castle or just a more local one?

 

I think for me, your thoughts make total sense.  I can't possibly get images into those rather generic searches.  I just don't have the CTR, sales, or quantity of images (or all of the above).

 

When I look at the "All of Alamy" field under Alamy Measures and see some of the crazy simple searches, I am amazed anyone would look through 15,000 images.  Someone searched for "ice cream".  They looked at over 15K images.  There are 158,284 images in the data base for "ice cream".  They looked at 10% of the images and zoomed four.  I can't compete with that just yet.  .

 

I would like to hear what others think of this strategy.

 

Rick

[losdemas]

22 hours ago, geogphotos said:

Maybe the thought process should be something like this for a picture of Orford castle in Suffolk, East Anglia, England

 

Supertags: Orford, Castle, Suffolk, East Anglia, England, 

 

But not: Britain, British, English, UK, United Kingdom, UNLESS the picture is good enough to stand a chance of a sale for 'British castle' 'English castle', 'UK castle' etc - is the picture good enough to represent a national castle or just a more local one?

 

Unsure. Who determines what a buyer is looking for aside from the buyer? Different cultures perceive things in different ways. Your image(s) of Orford Castle may be exactly what the client is looking for for their particular representation of a 'British castle' 'English castle', 'UK castle'. The mere idea of a 'local castle' may not even exist in their mindset - or that of their audience. That surely becomes more important when someone is looking for specifics - a particular type of castle in Suffolk, for example 

[losdemas]

4 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

 

The photographer would have to make that decision by assessing the likelihood of that particular image being chosen by a buyer looking for just that castle and only that castle, any castle in that region of the country, any castle in the entire country, possibly even in Europe, or the entire world?

I think we're at cross-purposes. I'm just saying leave English, British, UK, etc. in, as they are more likely to help than hinder. Then I intended to add that ADDING specific tags (materials, history, type, architectural details) as opposed to REMOVING them will help if you are the castle specialist and the 'go-to' tog on Alamy for such images. 

[Cryptoprocta]

Someone searching 'British Castle' might be looking for 'the' super photo of one of the super well-known beautiful castles. But they could be looking for images to illustrate a website, magazine series or book about British castles, so might want to see the entire range available maybe looking for a range of locations or architecture, or looking for more quirky examples. I'd say if it is a British Castle, then British Castle should be in the tags.Maybe even they are looking for less well known British Castles, but don't know exactly what they're looking for and want to see lots.

 

This is my general principle when tagging, not my opinion about castles specifically. I do realise with British Castles as with many other searches, that could lead them to a huge search, but no worse than when they search for e.g. Margaret (are they writing a book about famous Margarets?) etc.

[Cryptoprocta]

1 minute ago, geogphotos said:

Searching in Creative for 'English castle' the first one that pops up is in Scotland!

I've never understood what makes a file rank highly in 'Creative', even with a careful check using my own files.

Maybe it means 'creative keywording'! (which I don't recommend).

[CM photo]

42 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

Searching in Creative for 'English castle' the first one that pops up is in Scotland!

 

And that's because "England" and "English" are in the keywords (as are "Derbyshire" and "Buxton")?????  

 

[Rick Lewis]

14 hours ago, Cryptoprocta said:

Someone searching 'British Castle' might be looking for 'the' super photo of one of the super well-known beautiful castles. But they could be looking for images to illustrate a website, magazine series or book about British castles, so might want to see the entire range available maybe looking for a range of locations or architecture, or looking for more quirky examples. I'd say if it is a British Castle, then British Castle should be in the tags.Maybe even they are looking for less well known British Castles, but don't know exactly what they're looking for and want to see lots.

 

This is my general principle when tagging, not my opinion about castles specifically. I do realise with British Castles as with many other searches, that could lead them to a huge search, but no worse than when they search for e.g. Margaret (are they writing a book about famous Margarets?) etc.

 

But doesn't this severely hurt your CTR, waiting for that one perfect client looking for the unicorn in a haystack?  Or am I over emphasizing the relative importance of one's CTR?  

[Cryptoprocta]

15 minutes ago, Rick Lewis said:

 

But doesn't this severely hurt your CTR, waiting for that one perfect client looking for the unicorn in a haystack?  Or am I over emphasizing the relative importance of one's CTR?  

I don't really know. I think CTR must still be pretty important, judging by a recent search experiment I did.

But OTOH, look at how the search function itself takes any word from any keyword phrase and merges it with any other, leading to totally irrelevant search results.