Alamy's blog post on discoverability

[Jill Morgan]

I checked out Alamy's new blog on discoverability, and it seems they are pushing really low low important keywords that will give people more false views than real views.

 

This is there image of good discoverability for keywords on an image. They don't show the actual image, so not sure how many other's are relevant.

 

 

Now maybe the people at Alamy don't know anything about dogs, but French Bulldogs and Bulldogs are two different breeds of dog.  So there should not be a Bulldog tag.  And using idiotic keywords like ears, muzzle, patches. snout, nose, eyes and even small and big at the same time. Yet they don't have "Purebred Dog"  or "pushed face dog" as one of the keywords. And they have outdoors and small as both supertags and a regular tags.  And really, 'fresh air" is really pushing it.  I could go on and on.  So Alamy is saying to put in useless words to get that magic green bar that in the long run is only going to drop a contributor's CTR because of all the false views.

 

Shame Alamy.

 

Jill

[Harry Harrison]

This page, created 9/9/2015, modified 24/8/2020:

 

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/faqs/captioning-and-keywording/

 

"My images say ‘Poor discoverability, how do I improve?
A. The more searchable information you enter the more ‘discoverable’ your image will become. i.e. tags, supertags & completing optional information. The discoverability bar isn’t reading the quality of your metadata, it just increases with the volume of searchable information you enter. You don’t have to optimize all your images, there will be some that don’t require the full quota of tags etc.

[Normspics]

2 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

 

 

if you want to get it green, other the than CapITal game, just re-enter your Supertags as non-supertags, for some reason that counts as 2 KWs.    i'll change one of mine also to test and report on this tomorrow

 

Interesting 

[meanderingemu]

1 minute ago, Normspics said:

Interesting 

 

so i now have two images from a particular search which appear on page 2.  I have altered one by adding a bunch of of random capital letters, and another by doubling my ST to make then Green.  will report tomorrow if there is an impact. 

[Normspics]

7 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

 

so i now have two images from a particular search which appear on page 2.  I have altered one by adding a bunch of of random capital letters, and another by doubling my ST to make then Green.  will report tomorrow if there is an impact. 

I just checked the image I added 35 keywords too yesterday and completed all details it came up as #2 in a search result out of 550 today 😱

Edited July 22, 2021 by Normspics

[meanderingemu]

3 minutes ago, Normspics said:

I just checked the image I added 35 keywords too yesterday and completed all details it came up as #2 in a search result out of 550 today 😱

 

imagine if it had "high discoverability" 

[M.Chapman]

57 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

 

imagine if it had "high discoverability" 

It would probably appear even before the customer finished typing their search string. 😃

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, Normspics said:

I just checked the image I added 35 keywords too yesterday and completed all details it came up as #2 in a search result out of 550 today

That sounds interesting, was it a new image or had you previously done the same search with fewer keywords and optionals completed?

[Normspics]

44 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

That sounds interesting, was it a new image or had you previously done the same search with fewer keywords and optionals completed?

It was a new upload that had been up for four days, based on the blog post yesterday I increased the keywords up to 35 and filled out the optional details, address and release info etc. 

[meanderingemu]

1 minute ago, Normspics said:

It was a new upload that had been up for four days, based on the blog post yesterday I increased the keywords up to 35 and filled out the optional details, address and release info etc. 

 

had you tested where it appeared in searches before?

[Normspics]

2 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

 

had you tested where it appeared in searches before?

No unfortunately not, I just had the impulse to try the green discover thing after reading the blog yesterday. I might experiment with another photo from the same batch.

[Colin Woods]

4 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

someone has to pay for these blogs 🙄

That will be us with our pay cut I guess

[Normspics]

1 hour ago, Normspics said:

No unfortunately not, I just had the impulse to try the green discover thing after reading the blog yesterday. I might experiment with another photo from the same batch.

 

I have got another photo from my latest batch has been approved for 4 days, this time I have got it to go green! 42 keywords and all the optional details filled out. It's currently on page 2 of results at 72 ( I have a 100 set per page) so it's a grand total is 172 in search results of 4,186. Will see tomorrow if there is any change.

[Harry Harrison]

2 hours ago, Normspics said:

It was a new upload that had been up for four days, based on the blog post yesterday I increased the keywords up to 35 and filled out the optional details, address and release info etc. 

Thanks, good result though. I guess I need to upload some 'similars' and give them different treatments with respect to keywords & optionals.

[FocusUno]

if ctr don't matter to ranking then views don't matter and putting entire dictionary in tag fields maximizes sales with side effect of every image having the best discoverability, but discoverability isn't in the dictionary according to spell check

[wiskerke]

On 21/07/2021 at 23:50, meanderingemu said:

here, green bar 

 

And did it work?

 

wim

[meanderingemu]

2 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

 

And did it work?

 

wim

 

sadly i didn't think of saving after the capture.  so i tried two other tests today, will report tomorrow,  and then next week i'll report 80% of the observations.  

[wiskerke]

Just now, meanderingemu said:

 

sadly i didn't think of saving after the capture.  so i tried two other tests today, will report tomorrow,  and then next week i'll report 80% of the observations.  

Don't forget to get a baseline measurement for all possible searches.

 

wim

[meanderingemu]

2 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

Don't forget to get a baseline measurement for all possible searches.

 

wim

 

 

i made sure the change only one variable, getting to green, without effecting any of my search words. 

[Cryptoprocta]

On 21/07/2021 at 15:39, Jill Morgan said:

I checked out Alamy's new blog on discoverability, and it seems they are pushing really low low important keywords that will give people more false views than real views.

 

This is there image of good discoverability for keywords on an image. They don't show the actual image, so not sure how many other's are relevant.

 

 

Now maybe the people at Alamy don't know anything about dogs, but French Bulldogs and Bulldogs are two different breeds of dog.  So there should not be a Bulldog tag.  And using idiotic keywords like ears, muzzle, patches. snout, nose, eyes and even small and big at the same time. Yet they don't have "Purebred Dog"  or "pushed face dog" as one of the keywords. And they have outdoors and small as both supertags and a regular tags.  And really, 'fresh air" is really pushing it.  I could go on and on.  So Alamy is saying to put in useless words to get that magic green bar that in the long run is only going to drop a contributor's CTR because of all the false views.

 

Shame Alamy.

 

Jill

Maybe they just wanted the blog post to be "polpular".

It seems particularly useless that they didn't post the photo the keywords refer to (I know it's been identified above, but really, a post which claims to demonstrate good keywording should at least show the image.

 

(I thought dogs have 'hair' rather than 'fur'?)

 

'Bulldog' is an interesting one. Usually for wildlife, I'd put e.g. "Common Greenshank" and Greenshank, etc etc, so no doubt I'd have keyworded Bulldog as well as French Bulldog. I'm not sure what you  meant by 'Bulldog' as a different breed: English/British Bulldog? (Clearly, I don't know much abut dog breeds)

 

[Normspics]

16 hours ago, Normspics said:

 

I have got another photo from my latest batch has been approved for 4 days, this time I have got it to go green! 42 keywords and all the optional details filled out. It's currently on page 2 of results at 72 ( I have a 100 set per page) so it's a grand total is 172 in search results of 4,186. Will see tomorrow if there is any change.

 

The results are in this image now being "green" has jumped to #72 in the same search on page 1 of 100 per page, that's an increase from #172  on page 2. 

[meanderingemu]

14 minutes ago, Normspics said:

 

The results are in this image now being "green" has jumped to #72 in the same search on page 1 of 100 per page, that's an increase from #172  on page 2. 

 

 

did you touch anything that are known to affect the search? ST a keyword.   also not sure how newness affects stability ranking

 

 

 

 

My results.  Took 2 images that have been online for about one month part of a 1200 result search, and were "Poor discoverability": 

 

-Added the optional data

-added KW to bring it over 40, making sure none of these were part of my search words 

-added a few ST, again not relevant to search terms

-made sure this morning they are not in my measures results.

 

Got a Green bar, as per the Blog by Ellie.

 

Results NO change whatsoever in placement.  Both images are still on page 2, and actually outranked by images from same series that are still Poor discoverability.  I hope @Alamywill provide follow up, as this appears contrarily to their claim. 

[Normspics]

11 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

 

 

did you touch anything that are known to affect the search? ST a keyword.   also not sure how newness affects stability ranking

 

 

 

 

My results.  Took 2 images that have been online for about one month part of a 1200 result search, and were "Poor discoverability": 

 

-Added the optional data

-added KW to bring it over 40, making sure none of these were part of my search words 

-added a few ST, again not relevant to search terms

-made sure this morning they are not in my measures results.

 

Got a Green bar, as per the Blog by Ellie.

 

Results NO change whatsoever in placement.  Both images are still on page 2, and actually outranked by images from same series that are still Poor discoverability.  I hope @Alamywill provide follow up, as this appears contrarily to their claim. 

 

No exactly the same search term. There was a companion image to this one just a wider angle of the same subject it was about 15 images further down on the original search on page 2 and it is still there, I never changed anything about this image. So I have seen a jump over 100 in the search term and gone from page 2 to page 1 

[meanderingemu]

Just now, Normspics said:

 

No exactly the same search term. There was a companion image to this one just a wider angle of the same subject it was about 15 images further down on the original search on page 2 and it is still there, I never changed anything about this image. So I have seen a jump over 100 in the search term and gone from page 2 to page 1 

interesting. i'll try doing more tests of just adding irrelevant general words to see.  That does seem strange that for you it bumped the results and not for me. 

[Colin Woods]

Hmmm. If keyword stuffing with irrelevant keywords to get us to the green has an effect, then presumably we can stuff with a bunch of random three letter groups (ABC, XYZ, PQR, etc) and that way keep tightly keyworded and be green and hence have a higher search placement.

[meanderingemu]

2 minutes ago, Colin Woods said:

Hmmm. If keyword stuffing with irrelevant keywords to get us to the green has an effect, then presumably we can stuff with a bunch of random three letter groups (ABC, XYZ, PQR, etc) and that way keep tightly keyworded and be green and hence have a higher search placement.

this will be my next test.  i'm also making sure to use images where ranked has been stabilised, so few months old, and not newsworthy to reduce chance they got a search hit from customer.