Jump to content

Sudden drop in CTR today?


Recommended Posts

Anyone else had a sudden drop in CTR today? My CTR normally averages around .50 but for a few days it hit the dizzy heights of .60. Sadly, today, it plummeted to .20 for no obvious reason, zooms and everything thing else is much the same as before. I have never gone from .60 to .20 in the space of a day before. Seems strange, algorithm cock-up or just cursed?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Jansos said:

Anyone else had a sudden drop in CTR today? My CTR normally averages around .50 but for a few days it hit the dizzy heights of .60. Sadly, today, it plummeted to .20 for no obvious reason, zooms and everything thing else is much the same as before. I have never gone from .60 to .20 in the space of a day before. Seems strange, algorithm cock-up or just cursed?

 

I find at the start of the month CTR% always bounces around more because the numbers are smaller (and so statistically less robust).

 

Mark

 

Edited by M.Chapman
  • Love 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

CTR has been bobbing about between 0.50 to 1.00 for some time now. This morning it has shot up to 3.85 which surprised me as there has been no drastic change in views or zooms. Gone up a bit but not that much.

 

Allan

 

  • Love 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Allan Bell said:

CTR has been bobbing about between 0.50 to 1.00 for some time now. This morning it has shot up to 3.85 which surprised me as there has been no drastic change in views or zooms. Gone up a bit but not that much.

 

Allan

 

 

Found it!  I had two images searched and zoomed which gave a 100% CTR. Obviously when added to the rest brought up the figure of 3.84 overall.

 

Allan

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, spacecadet said:

Zooms? Whassat? Only had one in a fortnight.

 

Got seven at the moment. Last month five but I think a couple have carried over.

 

My biggest problem is no licences (not sales) since end of March.

 

Allan

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

An early month zoom meant mine moved from subpar to slightly above the Alamy average, with 6 zooms, plus one sale on 1,034 views for the rolling month. 

 

This was my first Zoom in June, and it was only one zoom out of 5 views for the search term, yet my CTR shows as 2.34 in my "news" pseudo, which is confusing, just nice to be around average at 0.66 overall for June, up from 0.48 in May. Not that it matters. In April my overall CTR was its worst - a dismal 0.19, yet I had 3 sales in April - there's never been much correlation for me between zooms and sales 

 

There were months in the past where my CTR was hovering between 1.0 and 2.0 yet I had no sales for months.

 

Out of 21 recent zooms, only 2 resulted in sales, but I had an additional 5 sales in that time that weren't zoomed. So less than 10% of recent zooms turned into sales. Or, to look at it differently, only 29% of my sales were zoomed beforehand while 71% were not. It's always been this way, so it's wishful thinking that any more of my 6 outstanding zooms for the rolling month will result in a sale, since one already has.

 

Over time I seem to average one sale for every 750 views, so keeping track of my views gives me a better sense of how I'm doing. I'm hoping the extremely low views so far this month are a result of the short holiday week and the start of summer when things slow down anyway.  Plus it's only 5 days, not even a week yet.

 

 

Edited by Marianne
Link to comment
Share on other sites

always hate start of month with graph dropping to 0 until you get your first zoom of month....    CTR crashed over last month or so....  but since zooms rarely ended up being licensed,  only 15% of licences this year were-and one was reported prior to the zoom itself- i probably shouldn't worry too much. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agreed with above, start of the month is the most volatile period.  Mine had large jump last week

p2593007602-3.jpg

 

This was because this image was zoomed twice on same day.   I tried to establish correlation between sales and CTR;   i.e.  if you have a sale, does this bump your overall rank and as result your images are shown higher in customer searches, thus potentially resulting in higher CTR.  But there are just too many factors and results are inconclusive.   I am fairly sure though if image was sold before this will rank that individual image higher when compared to others that had no sales (for particular search term).

Edited by Autumn Sky
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 06/06/2021 at 17:11, Michael Ventura said:

My CTR has dipped to .67, the lowest is has been in years....I usually hover around 1.0

I really really wonder how much attention to pay to CTR. Mine has stubbornly stuck around 0.4 no matter what I do. I have healthy zooms, now around 60-70 a month. I have decent sales, too. When, occasionally, I use a search term to see how high up my images are, they are generally on the first or second page. So I tend to not worry about CTR any more.

  • Love 1
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So I was wrong, another one of my zooms ended up selling. That's two zooms resulting in two sales in about two weeks. The exceptions that prove the rule I think. I still don't worry much about CTR as most sales, for me, are never zoomed. Views are up considerably since last week and that seems more important, for me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Sally said:

I really really wonder how much attention to pay to CTR. Mine has stubbornly stuck around 0.4 no matter what I do. I have healthy zooms, now around 60-70 a month. I have decent sales, too. When, occasionally, I use a search term to see how high up my images are, they are generally on the first or second page. So I tend to not worry about CTR any more.

 

I agree. And with such a large portfolio as yours, I'd imagine you go deep on a subject, so many more of your images, especially if they are high up, will show for a search, where  only one of many may be zoomed, making it harder to get your CTR up. I guess Alamy ranks Zooms because they probably are the images that look best as thumbnails, which may then bring buyers' attention to "more by this contributor" - I've certainly seen Zooms where another image not Zoomed in the batch was the one that sold. I'm much more concerned with how many views I've had, though seeing what's been zoomed is always interesting. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I pay no attention to CTR. Back when we could see our ranking (more or less) it was clear that having a high ranking reduced your CTR because your images were so often showing on the first page. So lots of views and not so many zooms in comparison. Now I seem to always be about average. I look at zooms and (mostly) sales to see how I am doing.

 

Paulette

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, NYCat said:

I pay no attention to CTR. Back when we could see our ranking (more or less) it was clear that having a high ranking reduced your CTR because your images were so often showing on the first page. So lots of views and not so many zooms in comparison. Now I seem to always be about average. I look at zooms and (mostly) sales to see how I am doing.

 

Paulette

 

What's a sale?

 

Hope you can hear that. I said it quietly so as not to upset anyone.

 

Allan

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, Allan Bell said:

 

What's a sale?

 

Hope you can hear that. I said it quietly so as not to upset anyone.

 

Allan

 

 

It is time to put this one to bed Allan. If you are talking semantics here, sale is a perfectly valid term. It refers to selling licences not selling images (a term some people object to). It is the term Alamy use as in Sales History- see the Contributor dashboard. 

 

If you mean this ironically and that you have forgotten what a sale is because it is so long since you have had one, it is what happens when Alamy sell a licence for an image. Hang in there or not. 

 

 

Edited by MDM
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, MDM said:

 

It is time to put this one to bed Allan. If you are talking semantics here, sale is a perfectly valid term Allan. It refers to selling licences not selling images (a term some people object to). It is the term Alamy use as in Sales History- see the Contributor dashboard. 

 

If you mean this ironically and that you have forgotten what a sale is because it is so long since you hav e had one, it is what happens when Alamy sell a licence for an image. Hang in there or not. 

 

 

 

HA HA HA.

 

Second meaning Mick.

 

See my post 4th June above.

 

Allan

 

Edited by Allan Bell
Link to comment
Share on other sites

53 minutes ago, MDM said:

OK. I have seen you post a bit about the first meaning not so long ago. Forgot to bring it up over that coffee. 😎

 

Don't worry I forgot to mention one or two things too. In fact I will send you an email about one we did mention but I should have expanded on my reply.  At least it will not clog up the forum.

 

Allan

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/06/2021 at 21:01, Sally said:

I really really wonder how much attention to pay to CTR. Mine has stubbornly stuck around 0.4 no matter what I do. I have healthy zooms, now around 60-70 a month. I have decent sales, too. When, occasionally, I use a search term to see how high up my images are, they are generally on the first or second page. So I tend to not worry about CTR any more.

Psychologically it is quite upsetting to see a dipping curve though, don't you think? We are programmed to expect/want exponential growth on a graph (especially, unfortunately, during these Covid times)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

39 minutes ago, Jansos said:

Psychologically it is quite upsetting to see a dipping curve though, don't you think? We are programmed to expect/want exponential growth on a graph (especially, unfortunately, during these Covid times)

i have learned to ignore it for the first week of the month.   However this week i'm half my average and yes it makes it look really bad. 

 

that said historically only 15% of my licences ever appeared as zoom before.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/06/2021 at 10:41, MDM said:

 

It is time to put this one to bed Allan. If you are talking semantics here, sale is a perfectly valid term. It refers to selling licences not selling images (a term some people object to). It is the term Alamy use as in Sales History- see the Contributor dashboard. 

 

 

 

Thank you, Mick. I’ve been having anxiety (😁) because I always said “sale” in the past and after Allan’s post, didn’t want to upset him. I can “sale” away, now.

  • Love 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/06/2021 at 21:01, Sally said:

I really really wonder how much attention to pay to CTR. Mine has stubbornly stuck around 0.4 no matter what I do. I have healthy zooms, now around 60-70 a month. I have decent sales, too. When, occasionally, I use a search term to see how high up my images are, they are generally on the first or second page. So I tend to not worry about CTR any more.

 

For the latter half of 2020 my CTR averaged something pathetic like 0.15, some months I was getting no zooms whatsoever. I was however getting a decent number of sales (using the 1 sale per 1000 images per month rule I have averaged consistently higher since exceeding the approximate 1000 image mark) and in a variety of subject searches my images are placed surprisingly high - as in the top half of the first page. I've come to the conclusion that zooms really don't make or break the system as a whole and I think most of my sales haven't resulted from zooms anyway.

Edited by Cal
Link to comment
Share on other sites

CTR seems a lot like the CIA; neither one tells me anything much. And they both are about as useless as the 50 tag idea.

 

When I do a test search on a subject I have, I always see an image or more of mine on Page 1 or 2 (almost always). And my sales remain constant. This month — June 2021 — is the best I've ever had. Zooms? Hmm. My zooms just seem to be sitting there and decomposing. I like my zoom lenses though. 

 

 

Edo

Edited by Ed Rooney
  • Love 1
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.