Tags and poor discoverability

[Arthur Batenburg]

On sale - poor discoverability
I have filled in all the mandatory and optional headings.
With 25 tags and 10 suptertags the photo still says: On sale - poor discoverability.
Any suggestions?

[meanderingemu]

6 minutes ago, Arthur Batenburg said:

On sale - poor discoverability
I have filled in all the mandatory and optional headings.
With 25 tags and 10 suptertags the photo still says: On sale - poor discoverability.
Any suggestions?

 

Ignore the discoverabilty indicator,  It is currently meaningless.  

 

25 KW sounds great, using supertag pushes up in search, so use it only for most important part of image

 

added: except if Red.  

Edited December 20, 2020 by meanderingemu

[meanderingemu]

8 minutes ago, Arthur Batenburg said:

On sale - poor discoverability
I have filled in all the mandatory and optional headings.
With 25 tags and 10 suptertags the photo still says: On sale - poor discoverability.
Any suggestions?

 

 

However, your captions need some work.  Describe who is it the image, your Cape Town waterfront, has a ships, Table mountain, in midday sun....  

 

Also full sentences in suppose to help with indexing....

[gvallee]

Also Alamy asked to tag in English only. 

 

I would recommend that you take time to carefully read the submission guidelines before uploading more images or you might find yourself too far down the line to correct what is wrong. The forum is also a mine of information and is well worth a read. The discoverability question has been answered zillion times before. It's all part of your homework if you want some success. No point in blindly rushing without understanding the implications of the way of doing things (CTR, SEO, etc). All the best.

 

[Mr Standfast]

Pictures on sale at last, good!

 

Alamy also recommend latin names for animals.

 

As Emu has said the discoverability bar does not help much. Too many tags can lead to false searches.

 

stay safe.

 

 

[NYCat]

Definitely put the latin name of wildlife. People will search that way. Also I think it is useful for buyers to see the location in the caption and I would also put it in tags. The location in the Optional section is not searchable. Someone might be looking for wildlife in a particular country or wildlife park.

 

Paulette

[meanderingemu]

11 minutes ago, NYCat said:

Definitely put the latin name of wildlife. People will search that way. Also I think it is useful for buyers to see the location in the caption and I would also put it in tags. The location in the Optional section is not searchable. Someone might be looking for wildlife in a particular country or wildlife park.

 

Paulette

 

 

Latin name and also common usage one, for example, i would likely also include`"female lion" in the Lioness image.  It probably also translate better in other languages that are used for searches.  Not every language uses the gender of animal in same way.  For example in French we use different derivatives for male and female cats, chat and chatte.  

[Betty LaRue]

I must say I’m impressed with your very good images. Get the captioning and tagging right, keep adding images as nice as these, and eventually you’ll sell. This is a marathon, not a quick dash. Don’t expect sales to come instantly, Alamy doesn’t work like microstock.

Keep on adding quality images and you’ll do well. I will say that having a variety of images is good. Add people. You don’t need model releases to license for editorial. Just tick the “no release” box on the second page. And the people don’t need to be model-beautiful. Just regular people doing ordinary things. It’s ok to show faces.
Good luck.

Edited December 21, 2020 by Betty LaRue

[Colin Woods]

To echo others, look into your captions and keywords. The image which struck me was the fishing boat - fishing and overfishing with its link to environmental concerns is very much current news and your keywords should reflect this. Your keywords and caption should answer Who What Where When Why and How. Where is the boat fishing, what is the type of boat and nets? These things should be in your caption and keywords. Beware copy and paste of keywords - you have  Dutch Landscape in your keywords, which this quite clearly is not. Do shoot your local scenes and daily life - my dream destination is someone else's local area. And, yes, ignore the discoverability bar. Its a waste of Alamy's programming time and a waste of time to even look at it, let alone base any decisions based on it.

[Ed Rooney]

10 hours ago, gvallee said:

Also Alamy asked to tag in English only. 

 

 

I've not been sure about this, but for the local place name, I put in both English and the native language. Milan and Milano, Leghorn and Livorno. Cuisine can also have two names. And what about British, American, and Australian English?

[gvallee]

5 minutes ago, Ed Rooney said:

 

I've not been sure about this, but for the local place name, I put in both English and the native language. Milan and Milano, Leghorn and Livorno. Cuisine can also have two names. And what about British, American, and Australian English?

 

All your examples are valid in my books. But the OP has tags like 'travel' in Dutch(?) I presume. That's what Alamy specifically asked us not to do. 

[Mr Standfast]

30 minutes ago, Ed Rooney said:

 

I've not been sure about this, but for the local place name, I put in both English and the native language. Milan and Milano, Leghorn and Livorno. Cuisine can also have two names. And what about British, American, and Australian English?

 

22 minutes ago, gvallee said:

 

All your examples are valid in my books. But the OP has tags like 'travel' in Dutch(?) I presume. That's what Alamy specifically asked us not to do. 

 

 

And plant names in Latin.

 

 

Tagging is not for the faint hearted! 😉

[Ed Rooney]

34 minutes ago, gvallee said:

 

All your examples are valid in my books. But the OP has tags like 'travel' in Dutch(?) I presume. That's what Alamy specifically asked us not to do. 

 

I've never met a Dutch person who didn't speak some English. And some like Wim speak better English than I do. I don't want to hear Dutch anymore than I want to hear Scouse. 

[Arthur Batenburg]

Do you mean that I should not use tags in Dutch?

[spacecadet]

5 minutes ago, Arthur Batenburg said:

Do you mean that I should not use tags in Dutch?

 

Alamy does its own translation into some languages- FR, I, DE, ES, but there isn't a specific Dutch site. You would need to ask, I think.

Edited December 21, 2020 by spacecadet

[Ed Rooney]

6 minutes ago, Arthur Batenburg said:

Do you mean that I should not use tags in Dutch?

 

I think you should do what you think you should do. 

 

[Steve F]

19 minutes ago, Arthur Batenburg said:

Do you mean that I should not use tags in Dutch?

Ditto what Space Cadet says about asking. I believe it was confirmed on a recent thread that we should at least use foreign place names in the language of that place, e.g. Wien (Vienna)

[meanderingemu]

23 hours ago, Steve F said:

Ditto what Space Cadet says about asking. I believe it was confirmed on a recent thread that we should at least use foreign place names in the language of that place, e.g. Wien (Vienna)

 

do you mean foreign name of place, or local name of a place?   and if foreign names,  how many and what languages were recommended? 

Edited December 22, 2020 by meanderingemu

[Steve F]

9 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

 

do you mean foreign name of place, or local name of a place?   and if foreign names,  how many and what languages were recommended? 

I just spent ages looking, can't find the thread! 😭

[Matt Ashmore]

Yes, you really need to work on your tags. Take this one for example.. 2DPDD11 .. I love the colours and vibrancy. Half of the tags seem to be your name though.. unless you are a world renowned photographer, people wont be searching for your name as keywords. And in any case, Alamy give buyers the option to search for images by a speicifed photographer without using tags. This image should have the keywords:

 

wood

woods

tree

trees

forrest

woodland

leaves

autumn

autumnal

fall

season

seasons

seasonal

nature

yellow

orange

brown

gold

golden

nature

outside

outdoor

outdoors

trail

countryside

hut

cabin

colourful

colorful           <-- including both American and English versions of the word

colours

colors

colour

color

Apeldoom

Netherlands

Holland           (yes, I know the country is actually called 'Netherlands' but some people still refer to it as Holland so worth adding the tag) 

Europe

rustic

calm

quiet

peaceful

nobody

restful

 

As has already been said, tags should be in English as Alamy translates to other languages and large proportion of Alamy's main customers are based in The UK and so English speaking anyway (and so will not be searching for Dutch words)

[spacecadet]

1 minute ago, Matt Ashmore said:

forrest

forrest

[wiskerke]

14 minutes ago, Matt Ashmore said:

Yes, you really need to work on your tags. Take this one for example.. 2DPDD11 .. I love the colours and vibrancy. Half of the tags seem to be your name though.. unless you are a world renowned photographer, people wont be searching for your name as keywords. And in any case, Alamy give buyers the option to search for images by a speicifed photographer without using tags.

 

There could be a reason for including one's own name. Mine was to be able to direct a client to my images here easily with a link consisting of a well chosen string of keywords including one of my pseudonyms. Not an option Alamy provides. I know of some other photographers putting in their name or a code for just that reason.

 

Now it enables me to see how many people on Alamy and Shutterstock and a couple of others have scraped my keywords wholesale. It's a mixed blessing: the images are usually abysmal and clients could get the idea they're mine plus that my images are available outside of Alamy. Google is your friend - most of the time, except when it isn't.

 

Re: the advanced search options, years ago the estimate of Alamy itself was that 5% of clients were using them. If you check your own Pseudo Summary, you can see how high that percentage is for your collection. (It's all the stuff between square brackets.) In my case when I last checked, admittedly some years ago, it was around 1%.

 

wim

[NYCat]

I include my name in keywords and a couple of times I have "caught" people who used my keywords and didn't delete my name. Both times I notified Alamy and the problem was corrected.

 

Paulette

[wiskerke]

2 minutes ago, NYCat said:

I include my name in keywords and a couple of times I have "caught" people who used my keywords and didn't delete my name. Both times I notified Alamy and the problem was corrected.

 

Paulette

 

Have you checked other stock agencies of the micro kind?

 

wim

[NYCat]

2 hours ago, wiskerke said:

 

Have you checked other stock agencies of the micro kind?

 

wim

 

Oh dear. No. I like to pretend they don't exist. Does it matter do you think?

 

Paulette

[NYCat]

I checked a couple and found the same one image on both. I can't really care. Should I?

 

Paulette