Images not being reshuffled anymore?

[PatrickB]

Hello All,

Is the order of images displayed on the site no longer being re-shuffled?

I recall this used to be done every few months with a "re-rank," and now it seems the image order has stayed the same for a year or more.

Is there even any re-rank or re-shuffle of image order anymore?

Thank you,

Patrick B.

[Doc]

Hi Patrick,

 

I tend to agree with you - seems the only thing in the last couple of years that changes image positions is new images being added; and there perhaps may be changes in position when an image has been purchased, if the next search uses the same keywords again (ie an image purchased moves up in search position if the same search words/phrase is used again)

Kumar

[David eastley]

It has been several years since there was a re rank. It probably means having different psudo's means little and I seem to remember several years ago Alamy said they would move more to an image rank rather than a psudo rank. I suspect they are well on that journey. I ( like Doc) observed that sellers and zoomed images tend to move up

[M.Chapman]

If re-ranks have been abandoned (I haven't seen evidence of a re-rank for about 2 years now) then there's presumably no penalty for keyword spamming and maximising the discoverability indicator is not harmful....

 

Maybe the re-rank algorithm was broken by the update to the new AIM and the associated change to database structures, and it's never been fixed since.

 

Mark

[wiskerke]

5 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

If re-ranks have been abandoned (I haven't seen evidence of a re-rank for about 2 years now) then there's presumably no penalty for keyword spamming and maximising the discoverability indicator is not harmful....

 

Maybe the re-rank algorithm was broken by the update to the new AIM and the associated change to database structures, and it's never been fixed since.

 

Mark

 

I'm sure it was deliberate. The idea was to promote single images that have been sold. (There has been a post from management about this I think.)

However it has come with a lot of side effects.

 

wim

[PatrickB]

18 hours ago, wiskerke said:

 

I'm sure it was deliberate. The idea was to promote single images that have been sold. (There has been a post from management about this I think.)

However it has come with a lot of side effects.

 

wim

Wim,

If you'd like to elaborate, I'd to know what side effects you are referring to. Some obvious, maybe others not so.

Thank you.

Patrick

[M.Chapman]

3 hours ago, PatrickB said:

Wim,

If you'd like to elaborate, I'd to know what side effects you are referring to. Some obvious, maybe others not so.

Thank you.

Patrick

One potential side effect is that if a contributor has a poor rank, they may find it hard or even impossible to improve the positioning of their portfolio. Individual images may rise (based on views, zooms or sales) but overall they may struggle.

 

This is all conjecture of course, as Alamy has made no comment over the lack of recent re-ranks. They used to occur at roughly 6 month intervals, but I don't think there's been a re-rank for over 2 years now.

 

Mark

Edited November 26, 2020 by M.Chapman

[Matt Ashmore]

I'm sure I remember Alamy saying a year or two ago that the "big bang" style re-rank was being stopped and instead the process would be more dynamic with images/contributors changing rank in a much less obvious and frequent way. I can't find the post saying this and this is just based on memory..

[Travelshots]

ALL contributors would like an Alamy response please

[MizBrown]

On 26/11/2020 at 09:18, M.Chapman said:

One potential side effect is that if a contributor has a poor rank, they may find it hard or even impossible to improve the positioning of their portfolio.

 

From what I saw last week in viewed images vs. whatever showed up on the first page, viewed images seem to be something more than just what shows up on a page.  Some zero view searches had images described by the search terms in Alamy's collection.  If a mouse-over is a view, some people looked at pages without checking captions and closed out, thus no views.   For anyone with a low rank, not photographing things with tens of thousands of images might also be useful.

 

For me, if some of my images aren't showing well as thumbnails on the searches, they need to be improved or deleted.   Also, I've been revisiting keywords. 

 

I can't blame Alamy for trying to show the photos that have sold before on the first page, or photos from the photographers who have sold before.   Their strategy should be putting up for view first photos likely to excite jaded photo buyers or researcher assistants.  As there's no way for anyone or cost effective way for a team to review and rank millions of photos, going with photographs that have at least been zoomed several times or sold showing up on the first pages is a good strategy for Alamy.

 

A search for polar bear shows Paulette's leaping bear fourth on the first page.