Cryptoprocta

That said, I only care about CTR if it affects Alamy Rank and therefore position in search.

I'm sure you couldn't! Sorry, can't resist:

Funnily enough, when I started in stock, my keywording was perfect - probably much better than it is nowadays - as not only did my other place formerly insist on pixel perfection, 'their ideal' lighting etc, but they rejected for poor keywording. Those were the days!

My stats are up now. Fingers crossed for sales!

I've still got: Sorry, there's a problem in fetching the data requested. Please try again later.

Not even a "Thank you for bringing this to our attention". Just a 'thanks' at the end, which is short for "thanks for your continuing forbearance, over which you have no choice".

And 1929 could be the number of fronds on the palms. Good game, good game ...

I know you won't appreciate this, so I'm going to throw in a quick comment then return to the uncontroversial matter of inaccurate keywording. Much of your portfolio looks like the cheesiest* microstock from c2005. Micro has moved on since then, and that's a totally different market from Alamy. *muy cursi Anyway, back to keywording. Keywords: 1929, america, andalusia, architecture, capital, city, coloration, cultural, culture, display, environment, europa, european, fountain, freshness, frog, garden, historical building, history, landscape, l

I I realise you're not captioning in your native language, and I appreciate the difficulty, but you need to caption and keyword accurately. The above photo looks to me like the content of a bag of pot pourri (popurrí) with a lot of dyed, dried plant-origin materials. But you have captioned it "mix of green herbs on white background", which is wrong. Also, most of your keywords are totally wrong: agriculture, baby, background, biological, chives, closeup(?), cooking, diet, dill, favor, food, fresh, garden, green, greener, health, healthy, herb, ingredien

8 licences in August: $131.34 gross; $52.49 net.

Well, good news. The OP TLS file was reported today and priced at $53.18 gross, $21.27 net. I'm guessing TLS would normally have a discount, so 🙂 (shame about the extra 20% though).

Why should we lose 20% because PAlamy didn't hire enough people to get through the backlog before the contract change?

Meanwhile, re the unreported TLS use above, I got an email: "We have received confirmation that this use will be billed this week. We're sorry for the lengthy delay on this query. " Then last night I found another unreported use, this time from November 2020. So I contacted Alamy. It was on a Russian website but credited to Diomedia. Answer: Thanks for sending this over. We do have a relevant download from a distributor so we’ve passed this on to our distribution team to bill. Shouldn't we (logically and morally, if not contractually) be getting the 60% on u

Yes, I try to caption in sentences. The OP was specifically asking about captions, as she currently captions with keywords.

In your captions? The two of yours I randomly clicked on have proper captions.

These are keywords, not captions.

I'd rather meet the infringement team!

Lots of regular customers have accounts which let them report up to three months after the file is used. Keep and eye on this and chase them up if it hasn't been reported by the end of September. Note that it probably won't be actually paid for some time after it's reported. BTW: Congratulations to have made a sale with only 11 images! I think the Beast has a good discount, so be aware that you won't actually see the money until your share of all sales add up to $50.

I found an unreported in-use in the TLS, used in Septermber 2020, on 11th June, and immediately did all the work to fill in the unreported use form. Alamy's answer: "We'll ask the customer's account handler to look into this and we'll get back to you." Nothing by19th July, so follow-up email: "Any word on this yet? I wouldn't have thought it would be difficult to chase up given that they have an "account handler". Alamy's answer: "We've just chased our colleague about this - apologies for the delay. We'll get back to you once we have an update." Nothing by yesterday (23rd Augus

More than a handful, but nothing like as many as I'd have thought, as I'm used to doing it with searches elsewhere, even though Google doesn't pay as much attention to phrases in quotation marks as they used to be. I'd have thought that during certain very 'polluted' search iterations, a searcher would try it 'just to see' if it would give them better results (it often did). In fact, an Alamy employee once said quite categorically that if a seach was shown in Measures in quotes, it was a staff member who had done it. I took that with a liberal pinch of salt, but What Do I Know

That is for searchers using quotation marks, not for keywording.

Why were you gobsmacked? That's exactly as I expected, because search ignores punctuation in keywords -as SpaceCadet said and Meanderingemu tested.

Also be aware that just because something is on Alamy doesn't mean it's legal. Unlike at least one other well-known site, images submitted to Alamy are not inspected for IP, only for IQ*. We, the submitters, bear all of the responsibility if we submit files infringing others' rights. *(Intellectual Property vs Image Quality).

BTW, although you didn't ask, I'd just like to say that your captions should be written in sentences and describe what's in the photo. What you seem to have just now is a list of keywords in the caption. https://www.alamy.com/blog/tips-for-your-captions-from-the-sales-team At least you don't have too many to go back over! 🙂

I know that's in an Alamy blog. I tried it out when it came out, and at that very time the search was very 'muddy', even rhinoceros beetles! It would be an easy experiment to do yourself, by changing tags you already have. But the important thing to remember is that the algorithm changes from time to time, and what works now probably won't work in the next change, or the one after that.