Categorising Landscape Images in Image manager

[MalcolmT]

Hi all

 

 

I am relatively new to Almy and in the process of uploading my images which mainly consist of wildlife and landscapes. I noticed that there is no actual category for Landscape images, so would like to understand where such images are categorised by others on here  - any pointers would be greatly appreciated thanks 

Malcolm

[Steve F]

39 minutes ago, MalcolmT said:

Hi all

 

 

I am relatively new to Almy and in the process of uploading my images which mainly consist of wildlife and landscapes. I noticed that there is no actual category for Landscape images, so would like to understand where such images are categorised by others on here  - any pointers would be greatly appreciated thanks 

Malcolm

Hi Malcolm,

In Alamy Image Manager, go to the optional tab once you have selected an image. There is a 'primary' and 'secondary' category. 'Landscape' is one of the options given from the dropdown. I must say I find it hard to select categories for a lot of my photos. Anything where I'm out and about in touristy areas goes under 'travel'. I photograph a lot of townscapes too - I sometimes put these under 'landscape' because there's nothing more appropriate. Good luck working out what photos count as 'lifestyle'

Steve

[MB Photography]

1 hour ago, Harry Harrison said:

Yes, there is a 'Landscapes' category and so you might find your landscape images easy to categorise, many images are not so easy and although Alamy encourage you to fill them in they have never given any guidance, nor explained how they are used to help people find your images, if they are used that is. 

I seem to remember a while back that in one of the Alamy blogs they asked people to fill in at least the primary category as a lot of their third party distributors use that field to place images into the appropriate category on their website. 

[MizBrown]

Most people will be looking for a photograph of some place, not "landscapes," and the broadest searches are likely to be something like "US National Park" and can get down to specifics of what geological feature in what season (spring, winter, autumn/fall summer), with or without people.   Name of park or county/district/departmento is a good keyword.  Landscape with flowers, rocks, trees and rocks -- just a description of what's in the photo -- is also good.   Major rivers tend to get searches -- so those with location either in terms of town on the river's bank, or district, or part of a park/protected area, or country.

 

 

[Harry Harrison]

2 hours ago, MB Photography said:

I seem to remember a while back that in one of the Alamy blogs they asked people to fill in at least the primary category as a lot of their third party distributors use that field to place images into the appropriate category on their website. 

I'd be interested to see that, I've heard that suggestion before, but given that categories only came in in 2015 and so half of the library won't have them it would seem like a fairly poor way of their distributors finding images, coupled with the fact that the list of categories is pretty poor in itself with major omissions and I imagine a large measure of inconsistency in the way they are used by contributors as they are doing it blind with no way of seeing the effectiveness for themselves.

[M.Chapman]

1 hour ago, Harry Harrison said:

coupled with the fact that the list of categories is pretty poor in itself with major omissions and I imagine a large measure of inconsistency in the way they are used by contributors as they are doing it blind with no way of seeing the effectiveness for themselves.

 

Also the categories that Almay customers can choose between on the search page don't match those we can set in AIM....

Nevertheless I always fill in at least one category in AIM, but suspect it might be a waste of time...

 

Mark

[Harry Harrison]

55 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

Also the categories that Almay customers can choose between on the search page don't match those we can set in AIM....

....and that just adds to the confusion, not only are they often different but they are totally unrelated to each other, the main front-end Alamy categories just work off keywords & captions.

[Steve F]

8 minutes ago, MalcolmT said:

I have also read on this forum that having images with high discoverability rating is not necessarily important - is this correct ? 

 

As far as we can tell, yes. Keyword spamming to get up to optimal discoverability is likely to hurt your CTR ranking which affects how high up in searches your images appear. Not to say you can't get up to that many keywords, but they should be relevant.

[MB Photography]

12 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

I'd be interested to see that, I've heard that suggestion before, but given that categories only came in in 2015 and so half of the library won't have them it would seem like a fairly poor way of their distributors finding images, coupled with the fact that the list of categories is pretty poor in itself with major omissions and I imagine a large measure of inconsistency in the way they are used by contributors as they are doing it blind with no way of seeing the effectiveness for themselves.

I agree with that. I went through the exercise of making sure my images had the primary category defined a couple of years ago (yawn). The list should be expanded. I always try to make sure it’s included in the keyword section anyway.

 

It’s interesting that if you use the Alamy “Browse images by category” from the home page it uses keywords with different search criteria applied. “Historical” searches for three keywords  “history and historical and archive”. If you don’t have all three keywords associated with your image then your image won’t appear in their search. Is the primary category being added automatically as a keyword? Who knows? Some explanatory guidance would be useful.

[Steve F]

9 minutes ago, MalcolmT said:

CTR ranking ? what does this refer to ? How is this ranking decided ? I am also interested to know if there is a way of finding out if an image has been viewed - I know the dashboard show sales - are image views registered as well ? 

 

If you're on your Contributor Dashboard, go to Alamy measures near the bottom. You'll see your CTR and the Alamy average, and your views and zooms.

 

CTR stands for “Click Through Rate” which is the number of zooms divided by the number of views, multiplied by 100. It only counts zooms from particular clients of Alamy. If you do lots of irrelevant keywords for your images or have lots of similar images, they will show up in searches, but will not be zoomed. This will drop your CTR rank. If you have a lower CTR rank, your images will get pushed back by Alamys algorithms to the back of the search pages.

 

 

Also, on Alamy Measures, click on Your Images. You can see which of your images got zoomed. If you click on your pseudonym and adjust the dates, it will show you which search terms resulted in your images appearing in a search and which got zoomed.

 

'Views' means appears in a client search but not 'zoomed' (clicked on).

Edited September 8, 2020 by Steve F

[Cal]

On 08/09/2020 at 09:09, Steve F said:

 

If you're on your Contributor Dashboard, go to Alamy measures near the bottom. You'll see your CTR and the Alamy average, and your views and zooms.

 

CTR stands for “Click Through Rate” which is the number of zooms divided by the number of views, multiplied by 100. It only counts zooms from particular clients of Alamy. If you do lots of irrelevant keywords for your images or have lots of similar images, they will show up in searches, but will not be zoomed. This will drop your CTR rank. If you have a lower CTR rank, your images will get pushed back by Alamys algorithms to the back of the search pages.

 

 

Also, on Alamy Measures, click on Your Images. You can see which of your images got zoomed. If you click on your pseudonym and adjust the dates, it will show you which search terms resulted in your images appearing in a search and which got zoomed.

 

'Views' means appears in a client search but not 'zoomed' (clicked on).

 

I most often find my zooms do not translate into sales... I'm assuming that's because they're being bought by clients of Alamy that don't have the credentials to register as actual zooms? I understand that not all zooms will translate into sales but to buy an image you must have to zoom it? Most of my sales have "apparently" never been zoomed!

Edited September 11, 2020 by Cal

[Steve F]

Just now, Cal said:

 

I most often find my zooms do not translate into sales... I'm assuming that's because they're being bought by clients of Alamy that don't have the credentials to register as actual zooms?

Same for me. And yes.

 

I'm assuming only major regular Alamy clients get recorded.

[Harry Harrison]

Yes, there is a 'Landscapes' category and so you might find your landscape images easy to categorise, many images are not so easy and although Alamy encourage you to fill them in they have never given any guidance, nor explained how they are used to help people find your images, if they are used that is. 

[Harry Harrison]

54 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

Nevertheless I always fill in at least one category in AIM, but suspect it might be a waste of time...

+1

[MalcolmT]

Many thanks for the replies - I actually use a Mac trackpad which I now know is not great when you have a list to scroll through ! It does seem very odd that the categories the potential customer uses does not relate to the to the ones we can use on AIM  🤫 Surely that can have an impact on customer's search results ? I have also read on this forum that having images with high discoverability rating is not necessarily important - is this correct ? 

[MalcolmT]

8 minutes ago, Steve F said:

 

As far as we can tell, yes. Keyword spamming to get up to optimal discoverability is likely to hurt your CTR ranking which affects how high up in searches your images appear. Not to say you can't get up to that many keywords, but they should be relevant.

CTR ranking ? what does this refer to ? How is this ranking decided ? I am also interested to know if there is a way of finding out if an image has been viewed - I know the dashboard show sales - are image views registered as well ? 

[MB Photography]

1 minute ago, MalcolmT said:

CTR ranking ? what does this refer to ? How is this ranking decided ? I am also interested to know if there is a way of finding out if an image has been viewed - I know the dashboard show sales - are image views registered as well ? 

If you look at the Alamy Measures section of your dashboard it will show you some useful information.
 

CTR is your “Click Through Rate”. If your image appears in a search and the buyer does not click on your image then your CTR goes down and your images start to appear further down the search list. If the buyer clicks on your image then your CTR goes up. It all depends on how many images they view and how many images they click on.

[MalcolmT]

thanks for the great information , this is very useful  indeed and it is interesting to note which images are getting viewed.  I will review my images and ensure that the tags are relevant for the image  - I guess I need to have a good sized portfolio on Almy to start getting sales - I only have x16 images now but am hoping to build this up over the next few months thanks again for all the comments 🙂

 

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, MB Photography said:

Is the primary category being added automatically as a keyword? Who knows? Some explanatory guidance would be useful.

I've wondered that also, but prompted by your post I looked at my own images to try and test it out.

 

If you search for 'Highmoor, Oxfordshire, Landscape' you'll come up with 8 images, all mine, I've clearly cornered the market though unfortunately you'll only be the second person to do that search, I was the first. Now they come up because of the keywords that I've added, but importantly I gave them all the Primary Category 'Landscapes'. If you add an 's' and search instead for 'Highmoor, Oxfordshire, Landscapes' you'll get nothing.

 

(N.B. This also shows what poor keywording I did on these images, never forget plurals!)

 

If you try using the main Alamy 'Categories' you'll see that the results are pretty close to the numbers that would result if you did the same keyword search yourself, the numbers are normally slightly higher and, importantly, the sort order is different, certainly at the front. It seems to me that these searches have been curated a little, front-loaded with extra images. So the 'Landscapes' category brings up 755,891 images whereas if you searched for 'Landscapes' yourself you'd get 755,625. Mind you some of those 'categories' are entirely curated and just bring up a few hundred images - so 'Teaching & Learning', 'Wonders of the World', 'Pets', even 'Live News & Reportage'.

 

Edit: I see that searching for 'Landscapes' brings up 1,391,628 results so the plural is actually a more effective keyword to use for a landscape picture. Surprised there's so few really but then Alamy is more about editorial I suppose.

 

 

Edited September 8, 2020 by Harry Harrison