discoverable Discoverable

[ChristoPhoto]

Hi, l have been editing my photos description and keywords to try and improve there searchability. The bar at the top of the editing window remains static and will not turn green from orange, green indicating good discoverability. Can somebody give me advice on how to improve this. Thank you.

 

Chris

[gvallee]

35 minutes ago, Richard Tadman said:

I struggle to get much past 20 relevant words for anyone searching, including bird;

 

Wow! Most of the time, 50 tags are not enough for me. I have built templates based on extensive research of AoA. Birds used to be my number one subject sales (215 to-date). Not any more as I have switched to other subjects. As an example, here's what I do:

 

Name (x2 minimum)

Common name (could be more than one common name), Latin Name (combinations if there is an hyphen in the common name or genus/species has been re-classified)

 

General (x13)

Australian Bird; Birds; Fauna; Wildlife; Wild; Animal; Animals; 1; One; Single; Only; Nobody; Nature; Bird

 

If perched (3)

Perched on a Branch; Perching; Sitting on a Perch; (might include foliage as it has been searched)

 

Location (3)

City, state, country

Behaviour (lots!)

Examples:

. singing: Open beak, singing/calling

. feeding

. inter-acting (young one begging for food, courtship display, 2, two) 

. for shorebirds, wading, etc.

 

Characteristics:

Female, Male, Young, Juvenile, Colour, Migrant, Shorebird, Garden Bird, Song Bird, Exotic, etc.

 

And so on.

It might sound over the top, but again, this is based on actual searches that have been performed.

As I said, so far I have licensed 215 birds, so my approach seems to work. Hope I have given you ideas.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Gen

 

 

 

[gvallee]

20 hours ago, Richard Tadman said:

Thanks Gen - I appreciate the comprehensive feedback. 
I don't have any problems with successful sales but strive hard to keep my keywording relevant. I understood that my CTR and position in Alamy searches could be detrimentally affected by attracting spurious searches and therefore should shy away from say "foliage" to quote your example. I chose the sparrow example carefully to try and demonstrate that having covered ID, gender, scientific name and perch, perching, sitting etc. there is little to further differentiate it. Location I suspect would be entirely academic since the bird is in close up and similarly with feeding calling singing etc. I obviously include terms such as small, popular passerine etc. and for say a Marabou stork it would be an entirely different keywording exercise.
All that said I appreciate your input. Many thanks.
Richard 

 

Hi Richard. I'm glad to hear that you're making sales with your birds. Wildlife is not the easiest subject matter to license!!

I had a fresh look at Measures for the past year. I agree, 'foliage' is borderline. 

Bird Singing: 10 searches - 1 sales, so I wouldn't exclude it.

Bird Feeding: 16 searches - no sale reported, so I wouldn't exclude it either.

Passerines: 1 search - 0 sales. I used to include it, but don't bother anymore.

 

I would disagree with you about location. If you ask anyone for help with an ID, the person will get very upset if you haven't mentioned location. It could be a regional search, like 'Birds of Queensland', 'British Bird'. You're right, the city is over the top.

 

Having said all that, I was flummoxed in the past to see a repeated search for a single keyword 'Wildlife'. Strange I thought, they don't know what they want?? Until I licensed a turtle that had been searched using this exact term. It turned out that the Guardian has a weekly photo gallery 'Wildlife'. They're not fussed about what animal/country, provided the image is eye catching. So much for our efforts!!

 

Nice talking to a fellow bird photographer.

 

Gen 

 

 

[Richard Tadman]

On 01/05/2019 at 11:43, gvallee said:

 

Wow! Most of the time, 50 tags are not enough for me. I have built templates based on extensive research of AoA. Birds used to be my number one subject sales (215 to-date). Not any more as I have switched to other subjects. As an example, here's what I do:

 

 

 

 

Thanks Gen - I appreciate the comprehensive feedback. 
I don't have any problems with successful sales but strive hard to keep my keywording relevant. I understood that my CTR and position in Alamy searches could be detrimentally affected by attracting spurious searches and therefore should shy away from say "foliage" to quote your example. I chose the sparrow example carefully to try and demonstrate that having covered ID, gender, scientific name and perch, perching, sitting etc. there is little to further differentiate it. Location I suspect would be entirely academic since the bird is in close up and similarly with feeding calling singing etc. I obviously include terms such as small, popular passerine etc. and for say a Marabou stork it would be an entirely different keywording exercise.
All that said I appreciate your input. Many thanks.
Richard 

[Autumn Sky]

To offer my opinion:   I am with gvallee.   I am still learning, but I believe when describing the image it is important not to think one-dimensionally.    First level is what you directly see on the image (i.e. sparrow on a tree), but second dimension is what this image as a whole might represent.   Not just a bird, or tree/outdoor/nature but  along the lines of calm, pastoral scene that appeals to environmentalists (insert 8-10 new keywords here!)  On some micros that report search keys I had combinations from the "Second Level" I'd never have thought about initially.

 

So for me 50 keywords is good.   But I'd lower down 40 requirements for orange - green switch (to 25 probably), simply because 40 stimulates non-adequate keywords by less experienced contributors that are led to think "AIM says my image is not discoverable, I gotta come up with more".   And at the end false hits only hurt them because of CTR that is hard to establish.

 

 

 

 

[gvallee]

31 minutes ago, BryanCanon said:

Oh I'm sorry Gen, I didn't realise.

sorry for butting in, didnt want to be rude, but I suppose it sounded like it.

Regards

Bryan

late here, I better get to bed !

 

Wires are getting more and more crossed by the minute LOL!! This time I was replying to Phil Robinson. 

No need to say sorry Bryan, you haven't done or said anything wrong!!

 

Gen

[BryanCanon]

Oh I'm sorry Gen, I didn't realise.

sorry for butting in, didnt want to be rude, but I suppose it sounded like it.

Regards

Bryan

late here, I better get to bed !

[gvallee]

3 hours ago, Phil Robinson said:

 

Tagging certainly depends on subject matter and some subjects require more keywords than other.  

 

Couldn't agree more but I was replying to Richard on the Birds subject only.

 

Gen

[BryanCanon]

Hi Phil, thanks for your comments.

I've never thought of some aspects that Gvallee has suggested, interesting.

But I admit to having started, just with text software, single pages, the file name being the subject (e.g. Pheasant) and then typing in all the tag words, semi-colon at the end of each, and when I need the "Pheasant" list of tag words again, I just open it up and copy/paste into the tag word place in the exif details page. Alamy can read them and they go where needed on the Alamy 'discovery' page.

But I can see, as has been mentioned, that I need to keep my tag words more appropriate.

Thanks again

Bryan

[Phil Robinson]

On 01/05/2019 at 11:43, gvallee said:

 

Wow! Most of the time, 50 tags are not enough for me. I have built templates based on extensive research of AoA. Birds used to be my number one subject sales (215 to-date). Not any more as I have switched to other subjects. As an example, here's what I do:

 

 

Tagging certainly depends on subject matter and some subjects require more keywords than other.  

[Phil Robinson]

I have no problems with the concept of 'discoverability'. If it was measured by how many of the fields - mandatory and optional - had been filled in, it could be very useful. 

But as it stands it is in direct conflict with what used to be the thinking behind the whole Alamy ranking system - which rewarded relevant keywording and discouraged keyword spamming.

 

 

[BryanCanon]

Hi Gvallee, some good tips there, thanks for putting them up!

Regards, Bryan

[Richard Tadman]

It is really quite a challenge to keyword say a picture of a sparrow on a tree branch and still keep the keywords relevant to the image. I'm conscious that associated words such as singing; flying; nesting etc. are misleading if the bird is simply perching. I struggle to get much past 20 relevant words for anyone searching, including bird; wildlife; avian etc.

Similarly an abandoned boat on the shore is pretty much just that! 
If you're submitting an image of holiday makers on Blackpool beach for example, the scope could be almost endless so I have given up trying to achieve high discoverability some time ago.

[MizBrown]

One thing is to check "What you should shoot"  and "All of Alamy" for searches that would have picked up some of your images if they'd had those keywords.   Look at the photos that the searches discovered and see if you have similar photos.   Also, see if you have possible Alamy scarce or unique photos that have been searched.  If what you have up is found and zoomed of these rarer shots, but not bought, shoot better examples.

And sometimes, the search function pulls in images that don't have the specific keyboard (I just was checking mine and found that one search pulled in a photo of the Pyramid of the Moon in Mexico as filling the search requirements for "Mexican Moon."  What should I do on my end as it is the Pyramid of the Moon in Mexico.  Looks like search was optimized to go after words within tags.  Will quotation marks either side of the tag stop this?

 

My ranking is pretty low so I doubt any of mine will show up in searches for women or woman, men or man, and child or children, but I've added those anyway. 

[Inchiquin]

Or call it something else. Newcomers who are unfamiliar with the Alamy system will assume that "poor discoverability" means "your photos are unlikely to be seen by buyers", which is not exactly the message you are trying to put across.

 

Alan

[Alamy]

21 hours ago, DJ Myford said:

Just use relevant keywords and ignore the Discoverability bar; it's another of the totally pointless gimmicks that Alamy seems so fond of.

@Alamy: This question has been asked and answered so many times now, how about scrapping this pointless feature? Or pay us each time we act as your helpdesk, since you won't respond yourselves.

 

The discoverability bar was introduced to encourage photographers to add more tags in general as this was needed within the collection. Many photographers, new to the industry, would only add 5 - 10 tags per photo and we regularly received emails about why these collections didn't make any sales. 

 

We agree that the discoverability bar as a function could be improved and all your feedback has been noted so we can take it in to consideration when further developing the tool. 

 

We would also like to point out that the forum is a platform made for asking other photographers questions about Alamy and the industry. We do not read every post or interfere unless necessary. We do however have a team that is happy to help if emailing them directly (contributors@alamy.com).

 

All the best

Alamy

[Autumn Sky]

To answer direct question (without going into discoverability usefulness debate):   Besides  #of keywords/super-keywords on 1st page, you also have to fill  2nd page (location, date, etc.) in order for discoverability bar to turn from orange to green.

[Colin Woods]

4 hours ago, DJ Myford said:

@Alamy: This question has been asked and answered so many times now, how about scrapping this pointless feature? Or pay us each time we act as your helpdesk, since you won't respond yourselves.

I agree. These posts about the discoverability bar are almost weekly, is it not plain enough that it is encouraging people to stuff keywords. For every person that asks here, how many are unaware that they are setting out at an immediate disadvantage because of this 'feature'.  and to the OP - I have 17500 images online of which 385 are with good discoverability. Like Phil, I am OK with that. 

[Phil Robinson]

Ignore the bar. Just ignore it. Really - ignore it.

I'm a big fan of almost everything Alamy do (almost) but this 'discoverability' is simply a waste of time.

Use keywords that are relevant to the image. The more the better IF they are relevant.

NEVER add more just to change the colour of the bar.

I have nearly 40,000 images on Alamy - 55 of them are 'optimised', about 1500 have 'good discoverability'.

I'm OK with that.

[ChristoPhoto]

Okay, Thank you for your advice, much appreciated DJ Myford.

[DJ Myford]

Just use relevant keywords and ignore the Discoverability bar; it's another of the totally pointless gimmicks that Alamy seems so fond of.

@Alamy: This question has been asked and answered so many times now, how about scrapping this pointless feature? Or pay us each time we act as your helpdesk, since you won't respond yourselves.