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[Guest]

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Edited September 7, 2019 by Guest

[John Morrison]

Your Alamyrank is a mystery wrapped in a riddle. Don't get too stressed about CTR, etc. Just add relevant captions and tags to each image, and let the algoriths do their worst (and going from 0.58 to 0.6 doesn't represent "dropping like a stone"!). Don't add tags just for the same of it.

 

The idea is that your pix turn up in appropriate searches (then maybe zoomed... and licensed) and, equally importantly, don't turn up in searches where they're not appropriate. Keywording is a bit of an art; I'm surprised that Alamy don't create a definitive guide for contributors...

[Matt Ashmore]

In short.. yes, every view that is not zoomed has a small adverse effect on the likelihood of your images showing high up in search results in the future.

With regards to keywording approaches.. there are those that advocate a small number of tightly controller keywords and other people that advocate being more liberal with keywords and different people have had varying degrees of success with both approaches.. but what is certain is that adding totally irrelevant keywords will harm you.

With regards to 'must we really fence with a bunch of algorithms'.. again, yes. This is how computers work...

[Guest]

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Edited September 7, 2019 by Guest

[John Morrison]

4 minutes ago, Jan Brown said:

And 0.58 to 0.6 does seem fairly dramatic.

 

Hang on... I'm no mathemacian, but 0.58 is almost the same as 0.6 (ie the same difference as between 58% and 60%). 😃

 

Patronising? Really??

Edited September 3, 2019 by John Morrison

[Guest]

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[Guest]

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Edited September 7, 2019 by Guest

[Matt Ashmore]

5 minutes ago, Jan Brown said:

But a keyword can be relevant or irrelevant, depending. For instance, if someone searches 'shoulder' that will return images tagged 'woman looking over shoulder' 'shoulder of mutton' 'shoulder season' 'shoulder blade' 'shoulder to cry on' etc. If the potential buyer puts in such a general term as 'shoulder', all the photographers who so helpfully and carefully tagged their images will be punished because the buyer wasn't precise enough. Hardly fair.

 

Fair.. yes and no. We all play by the same rules so I guess it should average itself out. I have an image of a young family sat at the side of The River Thames. I have keywords including, "Mum", "Dad", "River bank". This image for a time kept appearing in searches for "Bank of Mum and Dad". Alamy have made the decision to match words hidden in multi-word keywords and as such there is no good/fool-proof way of writing computer code to differentiate what the customer really wanted. The alternative is to introduce some kind of manual activity in the process.. but customers don't want to wait half a day to see search results!

[John Morrison]

Getting pix to show up when appropriate (and not show up where not) is, I reckon, about the most important thing to keep in mind when keywording.

 

Take a look at random through the collection, and see what percentage fall down on captions and keywords. This really is what makes the difference between regular and sales... and your pix falling into the sludge, never to be seen again.

 

You can only minimise the chance of your pix turning up in the 'wrong' searches... not eliminate them. That's what I meant about being stressed. If we keyword accurately, we can let the Alamy gears grind, and get on with taking and editing more pix...

 

Still patronising? I thought I was just being helpful. Oh well...

 

 

[meanderingemu]

33 minutes ago, John Morrison said:

Getting pix to show up when appropriate (and not show up where not) is, I reckon, about the most important thing to keep in mind when keywording.

 

Take a look at random through the collection, and see what percentage fall down on captions and keywords. This really is what makes the difference between regular and sales... and your pix falling into the sludge, never to be seen again.

 

You can only minimise the chance of your pix turning up in the 'wrong' searches... not eliminate them. That's what I meant about being stressed. If we keyword accurately, we can let the Alamy gears grind, and get on with taking and editing more pix...

 

Still patronising? I thought I was just being helpful. Oh well...

 

 

as someone who has gone through the same worrying about his rating, i think your input was helpful..  

[meanderingemu]

1 hour ago, Jan Brown said:

I started with Alamy one month ago with a CTR of 0.58 as, I guess, everyone does.

In that time, I have had 46 'views' with no zooms or sales. As a consequence, seemingly, my CTR has dropped like a stone: currently 0.6.

So, if phrases or words used in your captions or tags bring your photos up in a search even if, through no fault of your own, the photos are irrelevant to what the buyer wants or are not actually viewed at all because they're on page umpteen, you get marked down? Is that how it works?

Some of the search terms used were so general as to likely bring up thousands of images: 'great war', 'Corsham' and 'shoulders', for instance. So, every photographer whose photo is not zoomed or licensed as a result of a search is subtly punished for that? And does that make their photos less visible in future?

Should we, then, add maximum tags or next to none? Sounds like we're damned if we do and we're damned if we don't. Must we really fence with a bunch of algorithms?

 

this morning i have 6 time views for one image for what is obviously the same person looking for the same thing trying 6 different search with various little tweak.  I think you learn to shrug it off.  

I feel What you have to worry is when you see an innocuous combination of keyword that makes you appear in searches you don't want .  One of my recent example were of pictures of "Folk dance" in "City Square". so got hit with on a bunch of search for "Square dance" . so i decided to cut the "City square" KW on all but one image, as i didn't feel it added much chance of actual good hit 

[John Richmond]

1 hour ago, Jan Brown said:

I started with Alamy one month ago with a CTR of 0.58 as, I guess, everyone does.

In that time, I have had 46 'views' with no zooms or sales. As a consequence, seemingly, my CTR has dropped like a stone: currently 0.6.

You are confusing your personal CTR with the overall average across all Alamy contributors.  With 46 views and no zooms your CTR is actually zero.  That should show up on the 'Your Images' screens.

 

It takes a while for any new contributor to get views and zooms enough to start getting stable CTR figures so expect some wild fluctuations initially.

[BidC]

1 hour ago, John Morrison said:

Getting pix to show up when appropriate (and not show up where not) is, I reckon, about the most important thing to keep in mind when keywording.

 

Take a look at random through the collection, and see what percentage fall down on captions and keywords. This really is what makes the difference between regular and sales... and your pix falling into the sludge, never to be seen again.

 

You can only minimise the chance of your pix turning up in the 'wrong' searches... not eliminate them. That's what I meant about being stressed. If we keyword accurately, we can let the Alamy gears grind, and get on with taking and editing more pix...

 

Still patronising? I thought I was just being helpful. Oh well...

 

 

 

Thanks John - helpful to me  

[Guest]

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Edited September 7, 2019 by Guest

[Starsphinx]

3 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

 

this morning i have 6 time views for one image for what is obviously the same person looking for the same thing trying 6 different search with various little tweak.  I think you learn to shrug it off.  

I feel What you have to worry is when you see an innocuous combination of keyword that makes you appear in searches you don't want .  One of my recent example were of pictures of "Folk dance" in "City Square". so got hit with on a bunch of search for "Square dance" . so i decided to cut the "City square" KW on all but one image, as i didn't feel it added much chance of actual good hit 

I have wasps show up in searches for "social worker" because they are keyworded with "social insect" and "worker caste" - both of which are highly relevant terms.

At the end of the day everyone is in the same system so everything should be equal.

[meanderingemu]

1 minute ago, Starsphinx said:

I have wasps show up in searches for "social worker" because they are keyworded with "social insect" and "worker caste" - both of which are highly relevant terms.

At the end of the day everyone is in the same system so everything should be equal.

yes, but you can still manage some of it. since it will give you an advantage on those that don't.   By removing my marginal KW of "small town" on my "Cape dutch architecture " images now means no false positive "Cape town" hits, and AOA shows no actual search for "small towm cape dutch"  so no loss. 

[Guest]

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Edited September 7, 2019 by Guest

[Matt Ashmore]

1 minute ago, Jan Brown said:

I guess most potential buyers don't use it. Ah, whatever.

 

Yes, unless the search throws up 100s of bad results, I guess a buyer would just skip over bad results and look through a couple of pages until they find the image right for them.

[meanderingemu]

14 minutes ago, Jan Brown said:

That's hysterical. I had a similar problem with the search term 'social club' throwing up my photo of people on a bowling green tagged 'bowls club' and 'social activity'. Not as funny, though.

I know it affects everyone the same, I wasn't for a moment imagining it was a problem only for me.

I guess there's no way round it, even though there is a way to search on a more narrowly defined term. I guess most potential buyers don't use it. Ah, whatever.

 

probably not helpful, but AOA shows 0 search for "social activity" this year,  so does that kw hurt you more than help?

[Guest]

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Edited September 7, 2019 by Guest

[meanderingemu]

23 minutes ago, Jan Brown said:

Social club. What made you check?

you said you have the KW "social activity" so i was curious if that's something that would be searched .

[Thyrsis]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this but a ‘view’ doesn’t mean that someone has actually viewed your image. It means that your image was on a page that someone has viewed. Only zooms mean that someone has actually chosen your image to look at.

[Guest]

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Edited September 7, 2019 by Guest

[JaniMarkus Hasa]

3 hours ago, Starsphinx said:

I have wasps show up in searches for "social worker" because they are keyworded with "social insect" and "worker caste" - both of which are highly relevant terms.

At the end of the day everyone is in the same system so everything should be equal.

My image of tart cards also got shown for the same search. My keywords were "social issues" and "sex worker". (Have to admit that "social issues" is not very good tag for tart cards.)

[Inchiquin]

16 hours ago, Jan Brown said:

 

I know it affects everyone the same

 

 

And in that respect CTR is irrelevant in terms of your Alamy rank because you're being measured against your peers, not against a fixed standard. I was very exercised  by this when I first joined Alamy (as I imagine many new contributors are) because my pics of Salcombe Regis kept turning up in searches for Salcombe, but after a while I just accepted it as the way things are and concentrated on taking photos that would sell. Since I moved north I've now got my photos of the Rochdale Canal cropping up in searches for Rochdale. Years ago Alamy promised us that they would implement multi-word keywords, but when they finally did, for some inexplicable reason they still allowed the words to be searched for independently, which made absolutely no sense to me.

 

Alan