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Tags and plurals


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How many of you add plurals of words like village, landscape, sunset, portrait?  I do but feel I shouldn't have to if buyers were sensible in their use of search terms.  I mean how many landscapes can you fit into one image?  However having just read Alamy's latest blog on how to search, the example of a search term given there is "landscapes"!!!

 

Pearl

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Not often, but you're right, buyers are sometimes unsensible as evidenced in some search results.

The only time I would definitely do it would be for drinks containers- I'd usually have glasses and bottles regardless of  whether the image is a singleton. This is from experience.

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Interesting - I would agree with you that "landscapes" seems a ridiculous search term, and I have not used it as a tag, but now looking at AoA for the past year, "landscape" was involved in 64 searches but "landscapes" was involved in 94!! and that's just searches on the single word. 

 

I will sometimes add "villages" but I have never added "landscapes" or "sunsets" using your examples. 

 

Shall read the blog!

 

Kumar (the Doc one)

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I always add plurals if there is more than one of an object in the image, but plurals of those particular words does not seem an obvious thing to do. Of course if you are searching and you want to find examples of landscapes, you may well type in the plural. I don’t think I’ll be going over all my images to add those though.

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15 minutes ago, Doc said:

, but now looking at AoA for the past year, "landscape" was involved in 64 searches but "landscapes" was involved in 94!! and that's just searches on the single word. 

 

 

It may not matter- there are ten times as many images with the singular as with the plural.

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1 hour ago, Sally said:

 I don’t think I’ll be going over all my images to add those though.

You can simply search 'landscape' in your IM, select all images and add the plural. It's a useful tool when you come across an alternative word of any kind for images you have in your portfolio

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It's interesting... any one image will only ever contain a single landscape. But to someone using the search engine, they might want to see lots of images of landscapes hence typing 'landscapes' into the search engine would seem totally logical to some people. I can't see much harm in adding 'landscapes' as a keyword to images as I cannot think of any sensible search that might include this keyword to harm CTR. But if you take the train of thought and reasoning further, do you add the keyword 'children' to an image that just contains one child? I'm not sure that I would.. but it's the same logic.

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23 minutes ago, Matt Ashmore said:

It's interesting... any one image will only ever contain a single landscape. But to someone using the search engine, they might want to see lots of images of landscapes hence typing 'landscapes' into the search engine would seem totally logical to some people. I can't see much harm in adding 'landscapes' as a keyword to images as I cannot think of any sensible search that might include this keyword to harm CTR. But if you take the train of thought and reasoning further, do you add the keyword 'children' to an image that just contains one child? I'm not sure that I would.. but it's the same logic.

Yes I can see why someone might use that term but it is not logical and that's why I am surprised that Alamy used it as their example as though they are suggesting that is the way to do it.  Shouldn't they be discouraging the use of plurals for these types of searches as it means a lot of extra tags and work for us?  Perhaps buyers don't realise that we don't have automatic stemming here.

 

Pearl

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38 minutes ago, Matt Ashmore said:

do you add the keyword 'children' to an image that just contains one child?

 

 

Yes

 

In the same way i would add 'girls' to an image of just one girl..

Imagine a pic researcher looking for "girls using iPads"

They probably want A girl on an iPad......not a shot showing lots of girls together using tablet computers.

 

Natural language searches are the key here

 

km

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1 minute ago, RedSnapper said:

 

 

Yes

 

In the same way i would add 'girls' to an image of just one girl..

Imagine a pic researcher looking for "girls using iPads"

They probably want A girl on an iPad......not a shot showing lots of girls together using tablet computers.

 

Natural language searches are the key here

 

km

 

Hmmm... I've always assumed this would harm my CTR. I've always worked on the premise that if the buyer searches for "child" then they want an image containing a single child and if they search for "children" then they want an image containing more than one child. But I see your point.

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Yes, I always add the plural particularly gender I.e. Male, males etc. Also such searches as "women building site" doesn't necessarily mean more than one woman. 

 

Thought. Is plurals the plural of plural ! 

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Betty LaRue said:

I’ve mentioned it before in threads about discoverability. USE PLURALS!

I have an image of a man.

I use

 

man

men

male

males

person

persons

people

retiree

retirees

pensioner

pensioners

 

Betty

 

Senior

Seniors

Adult

Adults 

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Just now, Matt Ashmore said:

 

Earthlings

Lifeforms

Life

Meaning of Everything

42

 

You missed out "Earthling" and "Lifeform".

 

What about "Lifes".

 

And "The meaning of nothing."

 

Allan:D

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1 hour ago, Betty LaRue said:

I’ve mentioned it before in threads about discoverability. USE PLURALS!

I have an image of a man.

I use

 

man

men

male

males

person

persons

people

retiree

retirees

pensioner

pensioners

 

Betty

 

 

I shall be revisiting some of my tags on my images as a result of this thread...

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4 hours ago, Avpics said:

You can simply search 'landscape' in your IM, select all images and add the plural. It's a useful tool when you come across an alternative word of any kind for images you have in your portfolio

True, but some are already at their limit so it's not quite that easy. If I were to add all those alternatives for 'man', I'd be over the limit for quite a few photos.

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