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Keyword stemming


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Do contributors regularly keyword for plurals, even when the subject is clearly only singular?  My understanding is that Alamy does not use stemming, so that singulars and plurals are separate keywords, and we are encouraged by Alamy in contributor guidelines not to use plurals for singular subjects.

 

The recent Alamy twitter feed notes that a client is looking for “Seniors using modern technology”.  The accompanying photograph, however, shows a single old lady with headphones. Presumably keywording this image in accordance with Alamy guidelines would result in the tag of “senior” but not “seniors”, as a result of which the image would not, presumably, have matched the particular search phrase Alamy has quoted.  This reminds me that last year Alamy said that its most common search was for “Landscapes”, although I cannot imagine that many people would use the plural as a tag ordinarily. 
 

While I do sometimes do use plural forms for singular subjects, generally I try not to, not least to keep the number of tags down.  But seeing this image request from Alamy does make me wonder whether in fact I ought routinely to be using plurals even for singularly subjects.  This would not be necessary were Alamy to use stemming in their search engine, but I have not seen anything that suggests there are any plans to do so (unless I have missed something, which is very possible).

 

Graham

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I know they encourage using singular for one person, etc., but I think people will search for "cats" if they want a cat so I sort of compromise by making the "correct" designation a supertag and just add the other as a plain tag. Look at me. I saying tags, not keywords. Catching up with the times.

 

Paulette

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That's would be an easy test.

Just look on AoA if clients do use that for the subject at hand.

 

It's clear that contributors use things like:
 

London monuments

Rome monuments

Indian monuments

Japan monuments

European capitals

world capitals

 

These ones I have collected over the years from searches from AoA btw. So in these cases: yes. Even when there's only one capital or monument in the image. And even when there are legit searches and images for world capitals, showing just that: capitals of the world. Like on those sign posts.

But if there's a whole page of searches a year and only 1or 2 are of this kind, I would have a good look at my images and only include the plural if they would be showing up on the first page for such a search and most importantly if they would stand a chance of getting picked from that page.

Actually this is a question one should ask - and in all honesty answer to one self - for every image: will it have a fair fighting chance of getting seen and if so: getting picked?

 

wim

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32 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

 

These ones I have collected over the years from searches from AoA btw. So in these cases: yes. Even when there's only one capital or monument in the image. And even when there are legit searches and images for world capitals, showing just that: capitals of the world. Like on those sign posts.

But if there's a whole page of searches a year and only 1or 2 are of this kind, I would have a good look at my images and only include the plural if they would be showing up on the first page for such a search and most importantly if they would stand a chance of getting picked from that page.

Actually this is a question one should ask - and in all honesty answer to one self - for every image: will it have a fair fighting chance of getting seen and if so: getting picked?

 

wim

 

Does AoA mean all of alamy? As in the button you click to find this info out? You're the second person I've seen to say it in response to this kind of question.

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4 minutes ago, Cal said:

 

Does AoA mean all of alamy? As in the button you click to find this info out? You're the second person I've seen to say it in response to this kind of question.

 

You can click on that link when you're logged in. A ton of information about it in the archives of this forum. Here's one of mine as a start.

 

wim

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2 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

 

You can click on that link when you're logged in. A ton of information about it in the archives of this forum. Here's one of mine as a start.

 

wim

 

Thanks. I'll have to research it. I'm still baffled as to how people are managing to find what search terms led to their photos being found and ultimately sold. It seems impossible to narrow down unless you just manually type every keyword your image has until you find it in the list. I'll add it to my list of todos for tomorrow.

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1 minute ago, Cal said:

 

Thanks. I'll have to research it. I'm still baffled as to how people are managing to find what search terms led to their photos being found and ultimately sold. It seems impossible to narrow down unless you just manually type every keyword your image has until you find it in the list. I'll add it to my list of todos for tomorrow.

 

That's near impossible. Zooms are easy, because they show up the next day here, if you click on your pseudonym and then sort on zooms - highest first. You can do this for the whole of the current/rolling year.

Sales are a lot harder because not all sales are made by the client using one of the keywords. One way clients used to do it was by the Alamy ID#. However those results are not shown anymore. Clients do zoom images this way too. Also filtered out. Which is why lots of sales happen without zooms. Visible zooms that is.

Years ago these did show up, that's how we know. Too much useful information I guess.

Some sales do eventually turn up in the database report though, which is why it's fun to check the whole year once in a while and sort for sales. I usually do this around Christmas 😁.

 

wim

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13 hours ago, wiskerke said:

 

That's near impossible. Zooms are easy, because they show up the next day here, if you click on your pseudonym and then sort on zooms - highest first. You can do this for the whole of the current/rolling year.

Sales are a lot harder because not all sales are made by the client using one of the keywords. One way clients used to do it was by the Alamy ID#. However those results are not shown anymore. Clients do zoom images this way too. Also filtered out. Which is why lots of sales happen without zooms. Visible zooms that is.

Years ago these did show up, that's how we know. Too much useful information I guess.

Some sales do eventually turn up in the database report though, which is why it's fun to check the whole year once in a while and sort for sales. I usually do this around Christmas 😁.

 

wim

 

Thanks, that makes a lot more sense now. I just never thought to click on the pseudo itself and check things that way. Yes, indeed, you can infer quite a bit of info from this especially zooms that translated into sales.

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I also have tended to include the plural when keywording a single thing in an image because as said, searchers may well use the plural when wanting a single and visa versa. 

 

If an image has just one person in it, for example, cooking, I would still include the keywords person and people, but maybe also One and "1". It may sometimes reduce your ranking over a period of time, but I think this is a minor loss compared with the m=number of extra views and possible sales. 

 

Also, a searcher may think he just wants a picture of a cat, but may be persuaded by a picture with more than one cat in it. If they really wanted one cat they could search for "one cat"

 

Kumar

Edited by Doc
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15 hours ago, NYCat said:

I know they encourage using singular for one person, etc., but I think people will search for "cats" if they want a cat so I sort of compromise by making the "correct" designation a supertag and just add the other as a plain tag. Look at me. I saying tags, not keywords. Catching up with the times.

 

Paulette

 

You're ahead of the times as always, Paulette. 

 

Larry is still hand-feeding the pigeons, eh?

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No, Edo. I haven't seen Larry for a long time. I'm going back through images I took a long time ago and never uploaded. You'll have to check the date taken. I didn't know Larry's story (or the one he tells about himself) at the time I had a conversation with him and took those images. It seems he beheaded a couple of guys with a pocket knife. They deserved it, having just killed Larry's wife and children. He sure loved those birds. He was concerned about all the hawks in the park. I did hear something fall next to me one day as I was walking through the park and it was a pigeon leg. A hawk was dining above me. I don't go as much to the park these days since "defund the police" is happening here. Not to get too far into politics but how you can improve them by giving them less money for screening and training new officers is beyond me. Our anti-crime unit has been eliminated and there is no more overtime. Cops are retiring as fast as they can. Enough said. I only find the middle and eastern sides of the park have a safe vibe. Too many sketchy characters along the west edge. Back to the 70s-- which is when I moved to 8th Street so I guess I know how to take care of myself.

 

Paulette

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