Impact of making alternate Pseudonym

[meanderingemu]

Thought i would start an ATF to see what impact people have noticed on having multiple Pseudonym, as the recommendation comes up from time to time.  

 

From my experiences in last few days I have found following:

 

Pseudonyms affect the "Other image by same Photographer" .  The tests i ran only proposed images from the same Pseudonym as the original  

 

Pseudonyms impact on search ranking is inconclusive with results varying, but my lowest pseudonym is only 6 months old, so it might be getting a 'newness' ranking  

[M.Chapman]

Alamy's algorithms are complex and they change them. Making it hard (or even impossible) to get a conclusive result. Even if you do, the algorithm may change and invalidate the results. But here are several observations that still seem to hold true.

 

1) If an image has been zoomed previously (using the same search terms) it will rise above your other images that also meet the same search criteria that haven't been zoomed. Not sure if pseudos affect this, but the promotion of zoomed images sure makes reliable testing more complex.

 

2) Ever spotted the "rule of 19"? If a number of my images meet the same search criterion they will typically (but not always) appear in the search results as a chain of images with a spacing of 19. I assume this is caused by Alamy's "diversity algorithm" that spreads images from the same contributor so they don't appear as a block in search results. The spacing of 19 seems to apply to my images irrespective of whether the matching keywords are in tags or supertags or captions, although those with the best match appear earliest in the chain, and previously zoomed images tend to appear first. The position of the first image seems to be determined by rank, previous zooms and weighting applied to matching tags, supertags and caption. 

 

3) Alamy doesn't appear to have carried out a re-rank for ages and ages.

 

As you can perhaps tell, I spent some time investigating this in the past. But in the end, my conclusion is it was largely a waste of time. It's better to spend the time producing more images and tagging and captioning them with care .

 

Mark

[jodyko]

1 hour ago, meanderingemu said:

Thought i would start an ATF to see what impact people have noticed on having multiple Pseudonym, as the recommendation comes up from time to time.  

Also curious.

[Trev Rich]

very interested in replies to this from seasoned masters! Subscribed to replies!

Thanks for asking this.

[meanderingemu]

from my side I've done a few more tests, and i still find inconclusive  impact in search results and even looking in AoA seeing images in lower rated Pseudo with hits, and no hit from image higher pseudo. 

[dustydingo]

An observation of many previous attempts to analyse this very question leads me to one comment: therein lies madness, frustration and totally inconclusive results.

 

If you think it will help organise your images or help in other ways, do it. But looking for justification based on analysis of search results has been shown many times to be a total waste of time . . . in my opinion/experience. FFTD

 

DD

[Ed Rooney]

I've never seen anything useful about dividing ones collection into various pseudos. 

[meanderingemu]

4 hours ago, dustydingo said:

An observation of many previous attempts to analyse this very question leads me to one comment: therein lies madness, frustration and totally inconclusive results.

 

If you think it will help organise your images or help in other ways, do it. But looking for justification based on analysis of search results has been shown many times to be a total waste of time . . . in my opinion/experience. FFTD

 

DD

 

 

in fact the only  impact is somewhat negative, as it means certain images will  not show as "other image from photograph", removing potential for multiple sales. 

[wiskerke]

6 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

2) Ever spotted the "rule of 19"? If a number of my images meet the same search criterion they will typically (but not always) appear in the search results as a chain of images with a spacing of 19. I assume this is caused by Alamy's "diversity algorithm" that spreads images from the same contributor so they don't appear as a block in search results. The spacing of 19 seems to apply to my images irrespective of whether the matching keywords are in tags or supertags or captions, although those with the best match appear earliest in the chain, and previously zoomed images tend to appear first. The position of the first image seems to be determined by rank, previous zooms and weighting applied to matching tags, supertags and caption. 

 

If you check on contributors that sell many images a month, you'll see that their images are much closer together than those 19.

It works the other way around also: if you spot many images on the first rows by one or two contributors, you know they are really high sellers. Like really high. Like selling in a month what I sell in a year.

 

wim

[M.Chapman]

6 hours ago, wiskerke said:

 

If you check on contributors that sell many images a month, you'll see that their images are much closer together than those 19.

It works the other way around also: if you spot many images on the first rows by one or two contributors, you know they are really high sellers. Like really high. Like selling in a month what I sell in a year.

 

wim

 

That's interesting - I'd never noticed that - because I only looked at the placement of my own images (Duh!!). I wonder if checking ones image spacing is another way (besides BHZ) of assessing rank?

 

Mark

 

[wiskerke]

59 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

 

That's interesting - I'd never noticed that - because I only looked at the placement of my own images (Duh!!). I wonder if checking ones image spacing is another way (besides BHZ) of assessing rank?

 

Mark

 

 

In principle yes, but it's unclear how much is one's own rank and how much is the rank of the image. So much is clear: sales are a very important factor. Duh again! 😁

However very new contributors with very few images sometimes overtake all, images and contributors. That must be because very early on that image or the contributor had sales or maybe even just zooms. Because again and again Alamy has reassured us there's no such thing as a secret sauce. Meaning human intervention to favor someone.

 

wim

[dustydingo]

Is it an established fact that all images are individually ranked?

 

DD

[M.Chapman]

It certainly makes a difference as to whether the search term matches tags, supertags, or captions of individual images (as you would expect). Whether an an individual image has been zoomed using the same search term seems to also make a difference. I didn’t spot any effect of a sale on an individual image but I imagine total sales could affect contributor rank. But that’s just my testing a while ago, and things change.

 

Mark

[Klinger]

On 17/10/2019 at 06:01, Ed Rooney said:

I've never seen anything useful about dividing ones collection into various pseudos. 

 

Me neither with one exception, I use an artists name for motorsports, that matches what I use for all racing photos, in all publications and agencies, and my real name for all other photos. If someone is looking for a race car, I don't think they would be interested in a scenic panorama as also by this artist. After that, I've never seen any use or benefit and I think people who have spotted potential disadvantages are also correct.

 

[Ed Rooney]

That makes sense, Peter.