Negative Results 2022

[Rebecca Ore]

5 hours ago, zxzoomy said:

Hi Allan. I think more keywords and fewer long ones would help. For example, for 2JB7B9E of the group of pigeons, how about bird, birds, pigeon, pigeons, eat, eating, hungry, hunger, group of birds, etc?

 

There's a point where keywords become useless.   "Eat" as a keyword gets 500 pages of images.  

 

Another thing about the website that shows that advertising is the new direction:  scroll down and see "We Keep Good Company."  A few are gaming, web sites for non-html people, and computer OS and program companies (MS seems to have used Alamy photos as screen savers).  Others are definitely not. 

 

Shoot advertising photos and figure out how to do keywording for that, perhaps. 

[John Morrison]

46 minutes ago, Rebecca Ore said:

There's a point where keywords become useless.   "Eat" as a keyword gets 500 pages of images.

 

Which is why no one is likely to search the image database with such an imprecise search term. Even if they do, they have the immediate opportunity to refine their search - "eating Big Mag", "healthy eating", women eating salad and laughing etc - and reduce the number of returned images to a manageable amount... 

[anna182016]

I hope to make sale on July

[wiskerke]

8 hours ago, zxzoomy said:

Thank you. When I replace Allan's name with mine in the link you gave us I can see my images again. Maybe that will work for everyone?

It's only one pseudo at a time.

For a complete collection the link would be different. That's exactly why these links to left here are so practical. Plus the reason why some have left this forum altogether because it shows all your images across all pseudos.

Right click on your own link and you'll see what it looks like.

 

wim

[Marianne]

4 hours ago, Rebecca Ore said:

 

There's a point where keywords become useless.   "Eat" as a keyword gets 500 pages of images.  

 

Another thing about the website that shows that advertising is the new direction:  scroll down and see "We Keep Good Company."  A few are gaming, web sites for non-html people, and computer OS and program companies (MS seems to have used Alamy photos as screen savers).  Others are definitely not. 

 

Shoot advertising photos and figure out how to do keywording for that, perhaps. 

 

Playing devil's advocate here, good keywording is essential to images being found - you need lots of the single words suggested since you don't know what combo those searching will use. 

 

I think if you shoot advertising images, you'll make a lot more with assignments than with stock. 

 

Waiting for the newest update of LR Classic after various crashes today, between that and the US Supreme Court's recent gun-lobby favoring decision, I'm quite grumpy and distracted, so apologies Rebecca if I seem contrary. 

[Allan Bell]

 

Alamy mentioned somewhere that if you include a phrase such as "young lady using mobile phone" in your keywords the search engine will bring up searches for the single words within that phrase also. So you will have searches for "young, lady, using, mobile, phone" as well.

 

In the one phrase above you will be covering at least six different searches and possibly more with different combinations of wording occurring.

 

Allan

 

[Allan Bell]

On 23/06/2022 at 10:05, zxzoomy said:

Hi Allan. I think more keywords and fewer long ones would help. For example, for 2JB7B9E of the group of pigeons, how about bird, birds, pigeon, pigeons, eat, eating, hungry, hunger, group of birds, etc?

 

Thank you zxzoomy an interesting collection of keywords you give.

 

From my post above if I break my phrasing down I have:-  birds, corn, feral, pigeon, pigeons, wild, eating, flying, flock, melee, movement and Columbidae as single keywords.

 

The only word missing is "bird" and I think if someone is searching for "bird" then either they do not know what they want or they do not need an image of "birds".

 

Again thanks for the input and "hungry, hunger and group" are pertinent so will add then when I am next in my dashboard.

 

Allan

 

Edited June 24, 2022 by Allan Bell

[Allan Bell]

In the past where I have had images with a nice "blue sky" I have added that term to the keywording.

 

Have just carried out a search for "blue sky" and it returns 11,598,274 images.

 

Is it worth adding more images with that phrase even if they do have a "blue sky".

 

Of course it will depend on your ranking.

 

Allan

 

[Foreign Export]

1 hour ago, Allan Bell said:

The only word missing is "bird" and I think if someone is searching for "bird" then either they do not know what they want or they do not need an image of "birds".

 

 

If I may I think your logic is flawed.

I would always include relevant words, rather than being overly concerned with the buyer search term ( consider it but dont overly focus on it) because its the combination of words that works best. Omitting a relevant keyword is not going to optimise your images appearing in a search

 

Edited June 24, 2022 by Foreign Export

[meanderingemu]

1 hour ago, Allan Bell said:

In the past where I have had images with a nice "blue sky" I have added that term to the keywording.

 

Have just carried out a search for "blue sky" and it returns 11,598,274 images.

 

Is it worth adding more images with that phrase even if they do have a "blue sky".

 

Of course it will depend on your ranking.

 

Allan

 

 

 

i had only  negative results with it , someone looking for "blue xxxxx", so i generally don't 

Edited June 24, 2022 by meanderingemu

[meanderingemu]

3 minutes ago, Foreign Export said:

 

If I may I think your logic is flawed.

I would always include relevant words, rather than being overly concerned with the buyer search term ( consider it but dont overly focus on it) because its the combination of words that works best. Omitting a relevant keyword is not going to optimise your images appearing in a search

 

 

agree. on the other hand adding a word that if client would ever use has 0% chance of relating to the image, not sure i can think of any search with the word "Hunger" that would be looking for a pigeon, defeats the purpose 

[BobD]

On 22/06/2022 at 18:18, John Mitchell said:

Everything was humming along nicely for me until April, with 56 sales and decent revenue overall -- 14 sales per month has been my average for a long time.

 

Then the bottom fell out of the barrel in May after the "re-rank" or whatever it was. The latest website changes seem to be making the situation even worse. 😕

 

This is ridiculous, How can it be justified that a well performing port be penalized by a re-rank ( or whatever it was ).

Hopefully it is just a blip.

[wiskerke]

1 hour ago, meanderingemu said:

 

agree. on the other hand adding a word that if client would ever use has 0% chance of relating to the image, not sure i can think of any search with the word "Hunger" that would be looking for a pigeon, defeats the purpose 

 

That's an easy test:

Go to All of Alamy and try %pigeon%hunger% and %hunger%pigeon%.

Now just type %pigeon% to see all sorts of keywords that clients looking for a pigeon would use. Maybe also try %dove%, because many people use those words interchangeably.

Remarkably many searches for pigeon. I may have to re-think my subject choice.

Only one view for pigeon on a treadmill. But when I go look for that, there is no image showing in my part of the world. Ha! there's another search for pigeon treadmill! 3 views this time, but only this one image shows up. Where's the treadmill? Maybe Google Translate mixed up some words in Russian? Maybe I do not know what a treadmill looks like? Hmm.

My guess is that the client was looking for this youtube video.

 

wim

[BobD]

3 hours ago, Allan Bell said:

In the past where I have had images with a nice "blue sky" I have added that term to the keywording.

 

Have just carried out a search for "blue sky" and it returns 11,598,274 images.

 

Is it worth adding more images with that phrase even if they do have a "blue sky".

 

Of course it will depend on your ranking.

 

Allan

 

 

More than likely an image would not get found in a search for blue sky, but would improve chances of a view with a search, for example, ' tower bridge blue sky'

[meanderingemu]

10 minutes ago, BobD said:

 

More than likely an image would not get found in a search for blue sky, but would improve chances of a view with a search, for example, ' tower bridge blue sky'

 

but need to factor all the false positive results for people looking for the  "Blue Tower"  in Dubai.   (my issue was for a Train against a Blue Sky getting multiple hist for people looking for the "Blue Train" )

Edited June 24, 2022 by meanderingemu

[spacecadet]

On 23/06/2022 at 08:58, Wahavi said:

You do not include the county, the country,

To be fair to Allan, Lincoln is the county town and there are only about 100 searches/year on the county name. I do include it though, and do get searches and, I think, sales on it, but I can't check on them because MEASURES IS STILL NOT WORKING AFTER 4 DAYS. IME seaches on the country name are quite rare.

[Allan Bell]

Interesting how this thread has morphed into a discussion on keywording.

 

Another KW I think is wrong is the word "eat" on it's own.  Eat is a command or order, but eating or to eat gives the impression of eating.

 

Allan

 

[meanderingemu]

3 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

To be fair to Allan, Lincoln is the county town and there are only about 100 searches/year on the county name. I do include it though, and do get searches and, I think, sales on it, but I can't check on them because MEASURES IS STILL NOT WORKING AFTER 4 DAYS. IME seaches on the country name are quite rare.

 

and still no comments from leadership, and people wonder why "the forum may be on last leg"  🤔

Edited June 24, 2022 by meanderingemu

[wiskerke]

3 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

and still no comments from leadership, and people wonder why "the forum may be on last leg"  🤔

 

Let's hope they are trying to fix things on the client side first.

If that is the case, I totally accept these minor conveniences. If otoh these very useful resources would disappear for good, I would be very miffed also.

Maybe we should start 2 new topics in the proper place: One about things on the side of the client that are going wrong and one about stuff on the side of the contributor.

 

wim

 

[Allan Bell]

3 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

 

Let's hope they are trying to fix things on the client side first.

If that is the case, I totally accept these minor conveniences. If otoh these very useful resources would disappear for good, I would be very miffed also.

Maybe we should start 2 new topics in the proper place: One about things on the side of the client that are going wrong and one about stuff on the side of the contributor.

 

wim

 

 

How about a third topic on Alamy breaking away from PA and becoming an organisation worth submitting to again.

 

Allan

 

[sb photos]

1 hour ago, BobD said:

 

This is ridiculous, How can it be justified that a well performing port be penalized by a re-rank ( or whatever it was ).

Hopefully it is just a blip.

 

Only time will tell Bob. I doubt we will ever be informed. It's not just PA. Alamy was changing even before the PA acquisition.

[Allan Bell]

48 minutes ago, sb photos said:

 

Only time will tell Bob. I doubt we will ever be informed. It's not just PA. Alamy was changing even before the PA acquisition.

 

I think the changes being made at Alamy Towers before the PA takeover were requested by PA be done to smooth the takeover path for PA.

 

These things do happen.

 

Allan

 

[John Mitchell]

5 hours ago, BobD said:

 

This is ridiculous, How can it be justified that a well performing port be penalized by a re-rank ( or whatever it was ).

Hopefully it is just a blip.

 

The next couple of months should give me a better idea of what is going on. Guess I've been spoiled insofar as my average number of sales per month has remained remarkably consistent for a long time. Surprisingly, revenue is holding up quite well this year (average price $39.70), so hopefully I'm just overreacting. I can't help feeling, though, that a "new normal" could be on the way. 😟

[Rebecca Ore]

On 23/06/2022 at 13:36, Marianne said:

 

Playing devil's advocate here, good keywording is essential to images being found - you need lots of the single words suggested since you don't know what combo those searching will use. 

 

I think if you shoot advertising images, you'll make a lot more with assignments than with stock. 

 

Waiting for the newest update of LR Classic after various crashes today, between that and the US Supreme Court's recent gun-lobby favoring decision, I'm quite grumpy and distracted, so apologies Rebecca if I seem contrary. 

Alamy's search matching pulls out single words in multi-keywords so "hungry pigeons" would get "pigeons" and "hungry" the way "Nicaraguan people" gets some shots that have no people in them on the first page.   I've had the search program show people things that it pulls out of one of my phrase keywords.  

 

I think what happens is people who shoot advertising send the outtakes to stock agencies.  Possibly some photographers are working for agencies.   Judging from PA's Alamy web page, advertising is a direction PA wants to move in.  Being a hired ad photo seems to require being in certain major markets.  One brother had a photographer housemate who started in Charlotte, did well, and ended up in Miami where he did better.  I also know that some web marketing people scrape Flickr looking for photos to use.

 

I worry about the US invading Nicaragua because of a USAid "RAIN Project" that will totally put a hired Nicaraguan manager in charge to administer the US's plan with as little violence as possible.   My landlord says not to worry because the US is going to be having its own civil war soon. 

 

Roe v Wade decision was a particular monster, especially to a friend who's a retired nurse who remembers how that was worked around in her day (appendectomies covered abortions).  Nicaragua has strict laws about abortion, but they're not enforced and all other birth control is available OTC or free.     The gun law change in NYC is pretty nasty, too.   A current Nicaraguan tourism promotion ad is "Escape mass shootings.  Come to peaceful Nicaragua."   I haven't heard gunshots here since 2018.

 

Do a search for "Nicaraguan sign language."   Mine are the only relevant photos, five out of sixteen.  Some people must have seen the searches and decided to add the key words to photos of Nicaraguan signs.  

Edited June 24, 2022 by Rebecca Ore