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The Discoverability Bar


Mr Standfast

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Dear Alamy,

 

Five queries on discoverability and the relevence of the discoverability bar so far this year.

 

As I've said before, perhaps the high discoverability concept is confusing people? Certainly confuses me.

 

James

 

 

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11 hours ago, Ed Rooney said:

 

Yeah, Alamy. Can we cut that nonsense out? 

 

How about a tweak? e.g.

 

0% discoverability if no caption or tags have been entered (irrespective of ay other entries) as image won't be found at all

20% discoverability if a caption and at least 1 tag have been entered

30% discoverability if a caption and at least 1 super tag have been entered

40% discoverability if a Caption and at least 1 tag and 1 super tag have been entered

60% discoverability if a Caption and at least 5 tags and 5 supertags have been entered

80% if the contains property and people questions have also been answered

100% if at least one category has also been selected

 

Obviously the percentages could be different, but you get the idea.

 

That way "Discoverability" might actually become useful as a way for contributors to easily spot if they've forgotten to complete some of the fields, without encouraging keyword spamming.

 

Mark

Edited by M.Chapman
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I might add that there should be a way of retrospectively finding and reviewing your images in order to increase their discoverability ranking, so perhaps according to how many supertags have been entered and whether the Property and/or Model questions have been answered. The number of supertags can be found in the exported csv with a little bit of work but there is no way to do the same for the Property & Model status if both are zero. Of course Alamy are well aware of this and are apparently 'looking into it'. Personally given their newly discovered significance with respect to the new Ultimate & Vital Collections I think they should be compulsory rather than optional as I think they are on the phone app.

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2 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

 

How about a tweak? e.g.

 

0% discoverability if no caption or tags have been entered (irrespective of ay other entries) as image won't be found at all

20% discoverability if a caption and at least 1 tag have been entered

30% discoverability if a caption and at least 1 super tag have been entered

40% discoverability if a Caption and at least 1 tag and 1 super tag have been entered

60% discoverability if a Caption and at least 5 tags and 5 supertags have been entered

80% if the contains property and people questions have also been answered

100% if at least one category has also been selected

 

Obviously the percentages could be different, but you get the idea.

 

That way "Discoverability" might actually become useful as a way for contributors to easily spot if they've forgotten to complete some of the fields, without encouraging keyword spamming.

 

Mark

+1 👍

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Is an image really more 'discoverable' if dozens of irrelevant keywords have been added? It would be far more accurate to have 'not on sale 'for those with no caption and not enough tags to go on sale and then 'on sale' with however many tags have been added, or perhaps band of up to 10, 10 to 25 etc

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32 minutes ago, PatsyCollins said:

It would be far more accurate to have 'not on sale 'for those with no caption and not enough tags to go on sale

That first part is in place at least:

 

"In order to get your images ready to go on sale you just need to add a caption and a minimum of 5 tags. However, we recommend you add more than just 5."

 

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/captions-and-keywords-for-images/

 

It's a long time since I've tried to make the bar go green but I think you need 40 keywords as well as a high number of supertags in addition to the optional fields. Personally I think encouraging people to enter 40 keywords is too many and the model & property questions should be mandatory anyway. The difficulty with doing the latter is that you can't expect contributors to do that retrospectively in order to keep their images on sale so I suppose it just can't be done now and currently there is no way to find them anyway.

 

Goodness knows why the Location field can't be searchable, there would be more of an incentive to enter it if it was, though as someone has pointed out, it is at least searchable by Google now.

Edited by Harry Harrison
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39 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

That first part is in place at least:

 

"In order to get your images ready to go on sale you just need to add a caption and a minimum of 5 tags. However, we recommend you add more than just 5."

 

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/captions-and-keywords-for-images/

 

It's a long time since I've tried to make the bar go green but I think you need 40 keywords as well as a high number of supertags in addition to the optional fields. Personally I think encouraging people to enter 40 keywords is too many and the model & property questions should be mandatory anyway. The difficulty with doing the latter is that you can't expect contributors to do that retrospectively in order to keep their images on sale so I suppose it just can't be done now and currently there is no way to find them anyway.

 

Goodness knows why the Location field can't be searchable, there would be more of an incentive to enter it if it was, though as someone has pointed out, it is at least searchable by Google now.

 

If I remember correctly it's because it was causing false hits. A studio shot of an apple would be picked up in a search for London for example if the shot location had been filled in.

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1 hour ago, gvallee said:

A studio shot of an apple would be picked up in a search for London for example if the shot location had been filled in.

Thanks, I didn't realise it had been searchable in the past, that's a very good reason why it shouldn't be compulsory, and I suppose if the location is relevant it goes in the caption and/or keywords anyway. As I'm sure you know it's currently only used for the 'location' filter, now in the sidebar, so whatever is entered has to contain 'UK', 'USA', 'Europe' or 'Australia' within the text to come up with that.

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27 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Thanks, I didn't realise it had been searchable in the past, that's a very good reason why it shouldn't be compulsory, and I suppose if the location is relevant it goes in the caption and/or keywords anyway. As I'm sure you know it's currently only used for the 'location' filter, now in the sidebar, so whatever is entered has to contain 'UK', 'USA', 'Europe' or 'Australia' within the text to come up with that.

 

Yes, it was very clever of you to discover that. I would have never known. 

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20 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Wasn't me Gen, I just latched on to it, I wish I could remember who it was....Pearl?

 

You should have kept quiet and bathed in the glory 🤣

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