Jump to content

How to recover this situation?


Recommended Posts

I would say yes to both.

Two random images I looked at:

KMYYH1  no mention of Haifa or the Mediterranean sea in the keywords?  I would make these supertags.

KGPJJ3  no mention of Long Beach, South Africa in the keywords?

Try to get the most important keywords in the Title, and as supertags, possibly even repeating these as regular keywords.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

49 minutes ago, KODAKovic said:

On Jan i had 0 sales, 1 zooms (last day) and very few views.

How would you recover from this? Keep uploading? Rekeyword old images?

I wouldn't judge based on a single month's figures. How were your zooms and sales over the last 12 months? I hope a lot better than the year before (your first year on Alamy).

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, KODAKovic said:

On Jan i had 0 sales, 1 zooms (last day) and very few views.

How would you recover from this? Keep uploading? Rekeyword old images?

 

i had the same kind of month after a similar one in December.  In Jan no sales, 2 zooms, very few views.  Had a phenomenal 2017 where I more than doubled my sales from the previous year.  I did go through some of AoA and noticed that there weren't a lot of search terms for my images.  Now I didn't look at all 1000 pages, but it did help me think that maybe that month I just didn't have what people were looking for.

 

I plan to just keep uploading.  Whether in the re-rank I got demoted, not sure.  Haven't really checked it out.  But we will see what the other months bring before I panic, and since it isn't my main income, it doesn't make me sweat, just a little frustrating.

 

Jill

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Reimar said:

I would say yes to both.

Two random images I looked at:

KMYYH1  no mention of Haifa or the Mediterranean sea in the keywords?  I would make these supertags.

KGPJJ3  no mention of Long Beach, South Africa in the keywords?

Try to get the most important keywords in the Title, and as supertags, possibly even repeating these as regular keywords.

 

Reimar, i never did this.

I read somewhere in the forum that Captions were more and more important and enough instead of keywords.

Is it wrong?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, andremichel said:

I wouldn't judge based on a single month's figures. How were your zooms and sales over the last 12 months? I hope a lot better than the year before (your first year on Alamy).

 

 

 

They are good, the problem is that i started 2 years ago.

Since Dec re-ranking zooms dropped by 95%

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, KODAKovic said:

On Jan i had 0 sales, 1 zooms (last day) and very few views.

How would you recover from this? Keep uploading? Rekeyword old images?

 

You really have to work on your keywording and captions / descriptions.

 

F.inst. there must be a lot more behind your images from Mali? They are more like reportage images. Think what a buyer would like to depict with your images, and perhaps present some facts about the situation in the description field (not all images require this). If necessary, use the Internet about the area, food aid, etc. etc. to find the correct terms to describe this. Describe, be precise, exact and elaborating when you keyword. Use the description / "more information"  box (there will not be space enough in the caption field) - and put what you want to be searchable in the caption.

Leave out misleading/unnecessary keywords you reuse from another image, but don't tell anything about the actual one. 

 

Pursue new notions and ways to describe situations. Though not really news images, there are great resources on the Internet about how to write texts to news images in a correct way. Some of this knowledge can be used.

 

- and yes, go back and work on older images.

 

Keywording is an ongoing job and time consuming - but very educational :)

 

Good luck,

 

Niels Quist

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, KODAKovic said:

 

They are good, the problem is that i started 2 years ago.

Since Dec re-ranking zooms dropped by 95%

 

That's just the way it is on Alamy!

 

Unless you have a specific niche (in demand, of course), or have a large number of images and have been around for a considerable length of time, or have very high skills in capturing editorial images and/or keywording/captioning/research, or have some in-demand model and/or property-released commercial skills, then you are going to be subject to the ongoing whims of:

  1. Customer demands in any particular period
  2. What appear to be continual changes (tweaks!) in Alamy's search engine algorithm.

Onward and sideways....;):)

 

EDIT: I haven't looked at your images.  From Niels' (and others) comments above, it appears that there are actual practical steps that you can take to improve things.  Best of luck! :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Zooms can vary greatly for no apparent reason.  Last year my high month was 39 zooms, low 17.  Since mouse-overs began in 2009, my high month was 47 and low 3 (and the 47 came years before the 3 when there were fewer images).  Changes in zooms only appear to somewhat correlate with what might be re-ranks.  My impression, and it's only that, is that some viewers only view a relatively few images and zoom many of them, while others view a large number and zoom hardly any.  I've seen searches that included a few of my images that had 15,000 or so total views with no zooms.  Not good for the CTR, but then my competitors probably took the same hit.

 

I only consider that the ranking has changed to help or hurt me when the number of views changes sharply.  Zooms and sales just seem too random to provide any guidance.

 

Robert

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, Robert Shantz said:

Zooms can vary greatly for no apparent reason.  Last year my high month was 39 zooms, low 17.  Since mouse-overs began in 2009, my high month was 47 and low 3 (and the 47 came years before the 3 when there were fewer images).  Changes in zooms only appear to somewhat correlate with what might be re-ranks.  My impression, and it's only that, is that some viewers only view a relatively few images and zoom many of them, while others view a large number and zoom hardly any.  I've seen searches that included a few of my images that had 15,000 or so total views with no zooms.  Not good for the CTR, but then my competitors probably took the same hit.

 

I only consider that the ranking has changed to help or hurt me when the number of views changes sharply.  Zooms and sales just seem too random to provide any guidance.

 

Robert

 

 

I'll go along with that.  I tend to have higher sales from zooms than others seem to report here (~ 50% of my zooms appear to result in sales).  Even so, I regard zooms as waaay secondary to sales! ;):D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Reimar said:

Yes, that's wrong.  That was then, this is now.  If the keywords are not in the tags (or supertags), you are lost.

With the greatest respect, that isn't always the case nowadays.

 

In Dec, I noted on the forum here that I'd found a very highly positioned image with absolutely no keywords, but the word I'd searched on was in the caption.

Since then, I've found a few more. Some at least of these have been imported from another agency, sans keywords.

 

Also, when looking to see my own position, I'm seeing that inevitably my files are more or less evenly spread through the search results. I haven't been able to work out how the order of my own files is determined.

 

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been going through my port, splitting wrongly-merged keywords, and merging wrongly-split phrases (it happened when they went onto the new system).

I came upon a series of files from 2011. Most had been been put up as a batch, but one was in a different batch. That one had the actual subject totally missing from the keywords, so not a supertag. The others had the phrase auto-supered, as the name was in the EssKeys.

 

So I searched on the phrase, which was in my caption. (It was also in the caption on the other files)

The one without the phrase in the keywords was #12 of 504, and the ones which all had the phrase as a supertag were spread evenly below that one in the search.

So after the database had updated, my file with the supertag now added was ... #12 of 504!

 

So I feel as though I've been totally wasting my time, but maybe it will pay off in a future search reshuffle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Cryptoprocta said:

With the greatest respect, that isn't always the case nowadays.

 

In Dec, I noted on the forum here that I'd found a very highly positioned image with absolutely no keywords, but the word I'd searched on was in the caption.

Since then, I've found a few more. Some at least of these have been imported from another agency, sans keywords.

 

Also, when looking to see my own position, I'm seeing that inevitably my files are more or less evenly spread through the search results. I haven't been able to work out how the order of my own files is determined.

 

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been going through my port, splitting wrongly-merged keywords, and merging wrongly-split phrases (it happened when they went onto the new system).

I came upon a series of files from 2011. Most had been been put up as a batch, but one was in a different batch. That one had the actual subject totally missing from the keywords, so not a supertag. The others had the phrase auto-supered, as the name was in the EssKeys.

 

So I searched on the phrase, which was in my caption. (It was also in the caption on the other files)

The one without the phrase in the keywords was #12 of 504, and the ones which all had the phrase as a supertag were spread evenly below that one in the search.

So after the database had updated, my file with the supertag now added was ... #12 of 504!

 

So I feel as though I've been totally wasting my time, but maybe it will pay off in a future search reshuffle.

I find that kind of hard to follow - not sure what it means.

But in the long run, I think leaving key words or phrases out the tags or supertags is a recipe for failure.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have no idea what it means, as in 'signifies', I just was showing that as it stands in the current search algorithm, the caption counts higher than keywords or supertags, at least in the tests I did.

Also, spreading files from the same contributor seems to be a current policy.

 

I did say "maybe it will pay off in a future search reshuffle", I wasn't advocating that people should omit keywords!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Cryptoprocta said:

Also, spreading files from the same contributor seems to be a current policy.

 

 

The diversity algorithm to avoid clumping by the same contributor has been in place for years. It's not a new feature.

Years ago, the diversity algorithm used to work for the first few pages, then give up and show a contributor's pix all clumped together.

 

Gen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, gvallee said:

 

The diversity algorithm to avoid clumping by the same contributor has been in place for years. It's not a new feature.

Years ago, the diversity algorithm used to work for the first few pages, then give up and show a contributor's pix all clumped together.

 

Gen

I don't think I've been looking at really big searches. I've seen the 'clumped together' thing where one person has a speciality in that keyword, but this is smaller, more specific searches rather than something more general.

I'm not sure the diversity algorithm has been consistent through the years, but I don't have any actual data to support that opinion (my memory can be faulty!).

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Cryptoprocta said:

I'm not sure the diversity algorithm has been consistent through the years, but I don't have any actual data to support that opinion (my memory can be faulty!).

 

 

Consistency at Alamy? What's that? :):P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You need to start all over again with your keywording and captioning.

 

It looks like you are gang keywording an entire shoot with the same keywords, some keywords therefore are irrelevant to particular images.

 

Think like a client. If you have Italian food being made in Bolivia, “Italy” is not a good keyword because the images will come up in a search for someone looking for images only of Italy. This will count against you. You only want your images to come up when the client is looking for the specific subject matter in the image like “Italian food”. The Mali raw cereal balls may be made on a dirty street in Mali by poor people, but the image itself does not show “dirty” or “poverty”. Only caption and keyword for what the image actually shows.

A “report card” is not a “classroom”. "classroom" is too wide ranging, eliminate it as a keyword.


You have a lot of Italian dishes, but you do not keyword the name of the dish. Lasagna, pizza, etc

 

Keyword and caption for the 4W. When, Where, Why, What, and sometimes How, should be in both the caption and keywords.
 
Keyword according to Alamy instructions here. http://www.alamy.com/blog/tagging-images-on-alamy

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Alamy recently sent out an email to Stockimo contributors that I think gives very clear advice on keywords (tags).


Here's our quick guide on how to tag your photos

Top tip: Always consider what words a customer would use when searching


Think about what's in your photo

List everything you can see in your photo - 'dog', 'woman', 'grass', 'sky', 'road'
Be as specific as possible - 'Brooklyn Bridge' as well as 'bridge'
Include what's happening - 'running', 'walking', 'listening to music'
Add plurals if you think they're relevant - 'flower' and 'flowers'
Add words with the same meaning - 'mum', 'mom' and 'mother'

Where was your photo taken?

Include as much information about the location as possible, but remember that sometimes it's not relevant. For example, if a buyer wants a photo of a balloon, it doesn't matter to them where the balloon is.

Some extra things to remember...

Include emotions that are conveyed in your photo - 'happy', 'sad'
Add any characteristics that are shown in your photo - 'young', 'old'
It's great to add concepts & creative themes - 'power', 'strength', 'romance'
Include categories that are relevant to your shot - 'travel', 'food', 'lifestyle'
Make sure your tags are relevant to your photo, our system is clever - irrelevant tags will make your photos harder to find

 

 

Paulette

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lorenzo, Bill is right.

 

If you plan to continue to be tag-lazy, you may as well get truly lazy and stop producing stock. 

 

Bill, I'm not sure I agree with your theory about removing "Italy" from images of Italian food that are captured outside of Italy. If the location is obviously outside of Italy, sure. But let's suppose a buyer is looking for a few images of Rome or Florence, and he/she wants one to be a closeup of pasta. I would like my tabletop pasta images, the ones I cook and snap at home, to be in the mix. 

 

Without checking right now, I will guess that most my "Italian" images do not have "Italy" in the tags . . . but I'm going to consider adding it. 

 

Did I shot this picture in Little Italy or big Italy?

 

farfalle-pasta-with-peas-mushrooms-tomat

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.