Weird search term

[Brizbee]

Hi all, just checked My Alamy and found, amongst others, I'd got a single view for the search term '*'. That's it, just an asterisk! And I'm thinking, how? Any ideas?

[NYCat]

I tried that search and after a long wait it came up with 500 pages of images. ??????? I zoomed one and could not see a * in the keywords. ????? Well, if anyone can explain it I bet it would be Wim. He has an extraordinary amount of knowledge about these things.

 

Paulette

[John Mitchell]

Isn't the asterisk a "wildcard" character? It was probably just someone fooling around.

 

See here.

[Ognyan Yosifov]

39 minutes ago, Brizbee said:

Hi all, just checked My Alamy and found, amongst others, I'd got a single view for the search term '*'. That's it, just an asterisk! And I'm thinking, how? Any ideas?

Today I saw a [LU] search with no subject in front of it

[Brizbee]

53 minutes ago, NYCat said:

I tried that search and after a long wait it came up with 500 pages of images. ??????? I zoomed one and could not see a * in the keywords. ????? Well, if anyone can explain it I bet it would be Wim. He has an extraordinary amount of knowledge about these things.

 

Paulette

 

Hi Paulette, I tried that myself just to see what would happen and my picture didn't show up on the first 10 pages even though the original searcher only looked at the first page.

 

53 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

Isn't the asterisk a "wildcard" character? It was probably just someone fooling around.

 

See here.

 

37 minutes ago, Ognyan Yosifov said:

Today I saw a [LU] search with no subject in front of it

 

John, I think i'd heard that the asterisk was kind of like a wildcard but always thought it needed to be part of a bigger search term to return anything. For it to work by itself seems incredible. And Ognyan, to get a result from no search term defies logic. Maybe all these changes to Alamy's system have produced an algorithm that can read our minds. Now that's frightening!

[wiskerke]

I think the weirdest search term is Alamy.

Top of all searches for the rolling year with 496 searches and 9 zooms.

Followed by Alarmy. 417 searches; 18 zooms.

 

My favorite is V (326x) though, which must be clients trying to paste something into the search box. Which must be a very common practice among clients. I would like to know how clients feel about being unable to do such a simple and normal thing now on the front page.

 

I use it 98% of the time I am searching something on Google; Amazon or Alamy and a myriad of other sites and shops. I almost never type a sentence in the search box. Although Google is very lenient re misspellings, some of the others are not. I sometimes add a word or two though.

My guess is that clients are behaving the same. Maybe not when they buy images from their phone.

Those V searches have been there always. I see them quite often, because I have a couple of images related to Carlos V. (The King of Spain Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.)

 

The top 10 for the rolling year:

 

alamy	496
alarmy	417
dog	401
Ukraine	401
queen elizabeth ii	386
cat	360
boris johnson	344
v	326
login	283
ukraine war	243

 

The top 10 since June 21:

 

boris johnson	118
dog	61
cat	51
wimbledon	41
gabriel jesus	36
nick kyrgios	36
richarlison	35
cristiano ronaldo	35
car	34
kate bush	33

 

V is gone! Of course it is, because pasting does not work anymore on the front page. (It does from a results page.)

Even Alamy is now on 11.

So this did fix something. Even if it was by taking out a bridge.

 

wim

 

 

[Skyscraperfan]

My guess would be that "*" is the broadest search you can make and the result would show you the images with the highest individual Alamy rank of ALL quadrillion images Alamy has listed, because with no filter at all the Alamy Rank should be the only ranking criteria left. You might also be able to use your trick on your own images by adding a very individual keyword like "zldbvkisfvbsfvgbdyqövd" to all of your images and when you then search for that keywords two days later, the result should be your images ranked by Alamy Rank. That could be very helpful, because it also shows you which images rank worst. On that images you can improve the keywording or even delete them.

Would be interesting if that also worked on Google. Which results would Google return without any filters? Just the most populare websites?

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, Skyscraperfan said:

You might also be able to use your trick on your own images by adding a very individual keyword like "zldbvkisfvbsfvgbdyqövd" to all of your images and when you then search for that keywords two days later, the result should be your images ranked by Alamy Rank.

See this post also, that should work alI would think:

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/15674-new-alamy-website-layout/#comment-318200

 

Edit: Correcting myself, that would only work for a particular Pseudo, but then I've only got one.

 

Edited July 14, 2022 by Harry Harrison

[meanderingemu]

On 12/07/2022 at 21:02, wiskerke said:

 

 

I use it 98% of the time I am searching something on Google; Amazon or Alamy and a myriad of other sites and shops. I almost never type a sentence in the search box. Although Google is very lenient re misspellings, some of the others are not. I sometimes add a word or two though.

My guess is that clients are behaving the same. Maybe not when they buy images from their phone.

Those V searches have been there always. I see them quite often, because I have a couple of images related to Carlos V. (The King of Spain Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.)

 

 

 

 

 

I hadn't noticed the gone Copy/Paste since i never go from the Main page, usually from my bookmarked report page.  This is really bad, like you most of my searches include some pasting. 

[Harry Harrison]

6 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

I hadn't noticed the gone Copy/Paste since i never go from the Main page, usually from my bookmarked report page.  This is really bad, like you most of my searches include some pasting. 

You can use it, not right-click but Cntrl or Cmd V but it's clumsy getting into the field first, hence the evidence of failed attempts presumably.

[NYCat]

1 hour ago, Skyscraperfan said:

My guess would be that "*" is the broadest search you can make and the result would show you the images with the highest individual Alamy rank of ALL quadrillion images Alamy has listed, because with no filter at all the Alamy Rank should be the only ranking criteria left. You might also be able to use your trick on your own images by adding a very individual keyword like "zldbvkisfvbsfvgbdyqövd" to all of your images and when you then search for that keywords two days later, the result should be your images ranked by Alamy Rank. That could be very helpful, because it also shows you which images rank worst. On that images you can improve the keywording or even delete them.

Would be interesting if that also worked on Google. Which results would Google return without any filters? Just the most populare websites?

 

I have my name in the keywords of all my images and when I search it I don't think I get a real ranking of the images. The first page is a real mess of images that have never had a zoom or sale. When I am searching a subject I come up on the first page a lot and always with my most popular images. So I don't think it is a real sign of my ranking. I hope not anyway.

 

Paulette

[Ognyan Yosifov]

First time with no [LU] attached to my viewed photos after the hiccup ... for better or worst

Yuuuuuuhoooooooo 

[wiskerke]

LU is back to normal it seems and also copy/paste is working normally again.

I still get multiple searches of 100 views when it's obvious that there has only been 1 client.

 

wim