Discoverability: poor vs good vs optimized

[Jools Elliott]

Afternoon all

 

For once I have some free time between relentless traveling around the place and so I'm taking a closer look at my Alamy imagery.

 

Have any of you noticed a difference in the overall visibility and sales of your work by pushing that green bar all the way up to optimized? I ask as I have about 5500 images that are classed as being poor discoverability.

 

I'm wondering how much use of my time it is going through these and seeing what I can do to push the bar until the end.

 

Thanks

[Betty LaRue]

The general consensus is to disregard that feature. The most important thing you can do is only use relevant tags. Trying to pad your tag field simply to get in “the green” will cause your images to show up in searches where they shouldn’t, thus hurting your CTR.

 

That said, when I tag, I also use plurals. Someone searching for a single beech tree will often search “beech trees”.  Child, children, person, people, juvenile, infant, baby, babies, 1 year old, 1-2 years old, one year old, and such.  These tags won’t get you into CTR trouble because they are relevant. Also put in approximate ages of adult people,  and distinctions like Caucasian, Hispanic, etc.

What you don’t want to do is list “beech tree” when it isn’t the main focus of the image. What a buyer doesn’t want when searching for a beech tree is a shot of a model-T Ford with a distant shot of a beech tree in the background. 

 

For instance, how many relevant tags can you think up for a rubbish bin? 😊

I do always fill out the optional page. Sometimes that’s all it takes to get the green bar if you have 40 relevant tags already. 

Betty

[Betty LaRue]

By the way. Of the last 16 images I uploaded that will go on sale tomorrow, only 3 or 4 are optimized. Just at or barely over 40 tags.  Most of the rest have 20 something tags only.

[Jools Elliott]

4 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

By the way. Of the last 16 images I uploaded that will go on sale tomorrow, only 3 or 4 are optimized. Just at or barely over 40 tags.  Most of the rest have 20 something tags only.

 

Thanks Betty!

 

I need to properly look at what I have and what I think should be optimized or not. Of course, you never do what someone is likely to be searching for.

[Ed Rooney]

I'm happy to say that I do not and will not have a single image in the green. 

[John Morrison]

16 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

The general consensus is to disregard that feature.

 

Of course, we wouldn't need to find a consensus among the contributors if Alamy had clarified the situation. 'Discoverability' would appear to encourage the adding of inappropriate tags, to no apparent purpose, and that can't be right...

[Ed Rooney]

Right, John.

 

If I had time for pointless fun, I might take up Betty's challenge to come up with 50 tags for a rubbish bin. 

[Inchiquin]

From tests I did a year or so ago, it appears to have diddly squat effect on the positioning of images in searches, so as far as I'm concerned it's a complete waste of time to add less relevant keywords just to achieve a green bar.

 

Alan

[Malcolm Park]

18 hours ago, Jools Elliott said:

Afternoon all

 

For once I have some free time between relentless traveling around the place and so I'm taking a closer look at my Alamy imagery.

 

Have any of you noticed a difference in the overall visibility and sales of your work by pushing that green bar all the way up to optimized? I ask as I have about 5500 images that are classed as being poor discoverability.

 

I'm wondering how much use of my time it is going through these and seeing what I can do to push the bar until the end.

 

Thanks

 

Hi Jools. I have 58,321 Images with "poor discoverability" and 627 Images with "good or optimized discoverability". It doesn’t appear to make any difference to what is picked up in general sales for me. Not worth worrying too much about methinks.

[M.Chapman]

18 minutes ago, Inchiquin said:

From tests I did a year or so ago, it appears to have diddly squat effect on the positioning of images in searches, so as far as I'm concerned it's a complete waste of time to add less relevant keywords just to achieve a green bar.

 

Alan

 

In fact if Alamy ever get round to doing a another rerank and it uses CTR as one of the factors, it may actually degrade their placement.

 

Isn't it about time Alamy ditched the "discoverability" feature and replaced it with something more useful? Eg. 1 star for entering a caption, another for entering at least one supertag, another for entering at least one tag and then more for entering info about property, people and exclusivity. It could then act as a useful aid to find images where I've forgotten to fill something in. A bit like the old AIM did (with a tick on each panel).

 

Mark

 

[Allan Bell]

6 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

By the way. Of the last 16 images I uploaded that will go on sale tomorrow, only 3 or 4 are optimized. Just at or barely over 40 tags.  Most of the rest have 20 something tags only.

 

I find that most of my later images only have 5 to 10 tags. Anything more seems superfluous.

 

Allan

 

[Jools Elliott]

Thanks everyone!

 

In fact, one useful thing it has done is that it's made me go through what I have and see what needs tightening up in terms of keywording etc. I did find some images that didn't even have a caption so at least one good thing has come of this curiosity.

 

As for green bars, I've been waiting for the usual suspects to come along who I know are well placed to offer insight on this. Very appreciated that as usual a feature has been added but no details offered up by Alamy as to how much difference it makes and that contributors are giving the best feedback.

[the wordsmith uk]

hello. as a keyworder who has worked with Alamy since 2010 and spent many years interrogating keywords for accurate visual relevance

- requirements for full discoverability include..

keywords 45+  supertags 10.

'optional fields': people / release info / location / date / primary (and secondary) category

captions also now contribute to search.

 

When keywording, it may be helpful to consider both hierarchy and synonyms

a chair for example is also furniture and a seat, seating  - it will also have been made during a time period and be of a certain material

- it could be comfortable, empty, old or new...broken, repaired.. and one of many types (office, rocking, dining, armchair) it could be

in a room, a garden or a studio shot (context), colour may also be important.

 

In English, there are many ways of saying the same thing, if you add relevant alternatives you are adding synonyms.

Where an object sits within a wider grouping, (chairs also being seating and furniture) these 'umbrella terms' are hierarchy.

It is helpful to consider why a person would be looking for your image and ensure those terms are applied with variants.

Also adding plurals for primary objects when they are the main focus of search.

 

Because we don't know how Alamy will use data in future updates, it is advisable to ensure your keywords are relevant

and fulfill as many required fields as possible.

This may also be useful to you as you can download your data and enable search on your own content.

 

There may also be a current 'weighting' on new and refreshed content..

I have noticed sales patterns tend to improve when records are updating ..

while attention to the same collections can fade when input is at a minimum.

 

[Betty LaRue]

I agree about new content. When other things in my life keep me from uploading regularly, I notice a falloff in sales. When I upload weekly, it seems my images are positioned better and sales pick up.

Betty

[digi2ap]

5 hours ago, Allan Bell said:

 

I find that most of my later images only have 5 to 10 tags. Anything more seems superfluous.

 

Allan

 

I'm similar - less is more in my view. 

[Ed Rooney]

8 hours ago, John Morrison said:

 

Of course, we wouldn't need to find a consensus among the contributors if Alamy had clarified the situation. 'Discoverability' would appear to encourage the adding of inappropriate tags, to no apparent purpose, and that can't be right...

 

John, FYI on your tag or tags that reads "al fresco." 

 

The cross-Atlantic dictionaries have let us down on this one. It means outdoor dining in British English. But in American English, they use "alfresco," one word. Al fresco comes from the Italian, yes, but in Italian, it means "in the cool." They don't use it to mean outdoor dining . . . there are two other phrases for that. 😜

[spacecadet]

+1 on forgetting discoverability. I rarely get beyond 20 or 30 these days unless pasting from past similars- in which case it's a good idea to have room to do it, which you won't if you cram in tags up to the limit.

[Andrea Mori]

On 15/08/2019 at 19:08, Ed Rooney said:

 

John, FYI on your tag or tags that reads "al fresco." 

 

The cross-Atlantic dictionaries have let us down on this one. It means outdoor dining in British English. But in American English, they use "alfresco," one word. Al fresco comes from the Italian, yes, but in Italian, it means "in the cool." They don't use it to mean outdoor dining . . . there are two other phrases for that. 😜

 

In fact in Italian to be "al fresco" means to be in prison 😂

 

(presumably because in old times prison cells where located underground, so the temperature there was never hot)

Edited March 6, 2020 by Andrea Mori

[Ed Rooney]

Andrea, alfresco, one word, is an English term, based mistakenly on the two Italian words, al and fresco. It's a case of "found in translation." And am I wrong in assuming that the "in prison" meaning is Italian slang? I lived in Rome and speak some Italian. (bo!)

[riccarbi]

1 hour ago, Ed Rooney said:

Andrea, alfresco, one word, is an English term, based mistakenly on the two Italian words, al and fresco. It's a case of "found in translation." And am I wrong in assuming that the "in prison" meaning is Italian slang? I lived in Rome and speak some Italian. (bo!)

Yes "al fresco" is Italian slang (a bit old-fashioned) for "in prison"; yet, you can also use it as in English to say "in the open air", especially in Summer; "andiamo a mangiare al fresco" means "let's go eat in the open air"(usually under a porch or a pergola).
Back in topic, I usually don't care much about getting the green label. Yet, sometimes it remembers me that I could/should add some more keywords, especially synomyms, AE/BE spelling variants, and the like.

Edited March 7, 2020 by riccarbi

[Ed Rooney]

Gracie, Ric. When I find myself in a pizzeria that claims to be authentic Neapolitan, I drop the Naples slang term, Kesté, which means "this is it!" I get some smiles and too many blank looks. 

 

I have not got a single green image.

 

Edited March 7, 2020 by Ed Rooney

[Kathy deWitt]

On 15/08/2019 at 12:17, the wordsmith uk said:

hello. as a keyworder who has worked with Alamy since 2010 and spent many years interrogating keywords for accurate visual relevance

 

"This may also be useful to you as you can download your data and enable search on your own content."

 

 

 

Thank you for this information.  I am working on a new iMac using Chrome and I still cannot download my image data. 

Is there a way to rectify this please? Does it only work on certain browsers?

 

Kathy

[Harry Harrison]

29 minutes ago, Kathy deWitt said:

Thank you for this information.  I am working on a new iMac using Chrome and I still cannot download my image data. 

Is there a way to rectify this please? Does it only work on certain browsers?

You're quoting quite an old post there. Alamy haven't updated anyone on this problem but another user who couldn't download themselves asked contributors@alamy.com to send him his data directly. They did so (that's how it used to work anyway) and after that he was able to download his data himself, almost as if they fixed something on his own personal data. Not sure if he's still able to download. Might be best to try the same.

[Kathy deWitt]

Thanks Harry, I will  definitely contact Alamy!

[Chuck Nacke]

On ‎15‎/‎08‎/‎2019 at 07:17, the wordsmith uk said:

hello. as a keyworder who has worked with Alamy since 2010 and spent many years interrogating keywords for accurate visual relevance

- requirements for full discoverability include..

keywords 45+  supertags 10.

'optional fields': people / release info / location / date / primary (and secondary) category

captions also now contribute to search.

 

When keywording, it may be helpful to consider both hierarchy and synonyms

a chair for example is also furniture and a seat, seating  - it will also have been made during a time period and be of a certain material

- it could be comfortable, empty, old or new...broken, repaired.. and one of many types (office, rocking, dining, armchair) it could be

in a room, a garden or a studio shot (context), colour may also be important.

 

In English, there are many ways of saying the same thing, if you add relevant alternatives you are adding synonyms.

Where an object sits within a wider grouping, (chairs also being seating and furniture) these 'umbrella terms' are hierarchy.

It is helpful to consider why a person would be looking for your image and ensure those terms are applied with variants.

Also adding plurals for primary objects when they are the main focus of search.

 

Because we don't know how Alamy will use data in future updates, it is advisable to ensure your keywords are relevant

and fulfill as many required fields as possible.

This may also be useful to you as you can download your data and enable search on your own content.

 

There may also be a current 'weighting' on new and refreshed content..

I have noticed sales patterns tend to improve when records are updating ..

while attention to the same collections can fade when input is at a minimum.

 

Best Post I have seen on the Forum in a very long time.

 

Thanks,

 

Chuck