Mr Standfast Posted February 19, 2023 Share Posted February 19, 2023 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 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PatsyCollins Posted February 20, 2023 Share Posted February 20, 2023 It confuses me too. I'm good with words, so can easily come up with dozens which are vaguely related to an image – but I don't see how that helps people search for what they actually want. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve F Posted February 21, 2023 Share Posted February 21, 2023 +1. It just seems to encourage keyword spamming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted February 21, 2023 Share Posted February 21, 2023 Yeah, Alamy. Can we cut that nonsense out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M.Chapman Posted February 21, 2023 Share Posted February 21, 2023 (edited) 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 February 21, 2023 by M.Chapman 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Harrison Posted February 21, 2023 Share Posted February 21, 2023 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Standfast Posted February 21, 2023 Author Share Posted February 21, 2023 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 👍 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PatsyCollins Posted February 24, 2023 Share Posted February 24, 2023 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 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Harrison Posted February 24, 2023 Share Posted February 24, 2023 (edited) 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 February 24, 2023 by Harry Harrison 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gvallee Posted February 24, 2023 Share Posted February 24, 2023 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Harrison Posted February 24, 2023 Share Posted February 24, 2023 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. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gvallee Posted February 24, 2023 Share Posted February 24, 2023 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Harrison Posted February 24, 2023 Share Posted February 24, 2023 30 minutes ago, gvallee said: Yes, it was very clever of you to discover that. I would have never known. Wasn't me Gen, I just latched on to it, I wish I could remember who it was....Pearl? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Harrison Posted February 24, 2023 Share Posted February 24, 2023 40 minutes ago, gvallee said: Yes, it was very clever of you to discover that. Yes, it was Pearl! https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/11253-do-you-fill-optional-tab/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-204621 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gvallee Posted February 24, 2023 Share Posted February 24, 2023 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 🤣 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Standfast Posted March 30, 2023 Author Share Posted March 30, 2023 Dear Alamy, another discoverability query today. Jus sayin. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Standfast Posted November 3, 2023 Author Share Posted November 3, 2023 Bump... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve F Posted November 8, 2023 Share Posted November 8, 2023 Almost weekly discoverability queries.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted November 8, 2023 Share Posted November 8, 2023 3 minutes ago, Steve F said: Almost weekly discoverability queries.... .....and not a peep from Alamy on a 9-month-old thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Harrison Posted November 8, 2023 Share Posted November 8, 2023 Seem to remember there was a questionnaire as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Standfast Posted November 18, 2023 Author Share Posted November 18, 2023 The discoverability bar is not really the problem, I think that's why Alamy have never spent the money to fix it. Consider the situation that a new contributor uploads to alamy full of hope and pride and the result is: no sales, they are suddenly not rich! They then look around the website for answers, sure there are FAQ's, the blog and the contributor help page link at the top of the forum page: But the most prominent solution they will find is the Discoverability Bar. When the forum looks at the contributors problem the solution is not their number of keywords but their product, captions and keywords. Brian Yarvin sensibly suggested "Perhaps a contributor-created static content area would be a good idea. We could answer all the basic questions and sign with our names and portfolio links." So come on Alamy what do you think? You promise to read eveything in this thread. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alamy Posted November 24, 2023 Share Posted November 24, 2023 Hi All, To follow up on the discoverability bar - it was introduced to encourage contributors to ensure they had useful tags on their images where perhaps contributors weren't adding enough keywords a few years ago. But we've always said that there may be images that don't require the ‘full quota’ of tags - these ones are fine to leave without boosting discoverability further. The most important thing is to enter accurate and relevant keywords. We don't think a customer should get frustrated if an image they didn't search for appears in the results. Remember that searchable information also includes the ‘optional information’; number of people, property, date taken, location, primary and secondary categories. We do rely on contributors to be accurate in the data they apply to their images, but we're also aware that sometimes things get missed and believe that the more accurate the metadata, the better the experience is for the customer (and fairer to other contributors) when searching. In this respect we've been actively searching and correcting incorrectly annotated images (mainly the 'date taken' field) or removing problematic images such as AI-generated material, and over the past several months have dealt with 8 million images in relation to these endeavours. We have been analysing the results of the contributor survey we ran in September and October and we'll be posting a blog soon to share with you some of the answers and data. From the plans we already have in place, in combination with the feedback that was shared on the survey and the experiences shared here, we will be updating in contributor areas to improve the contributor experience on the platform, and in doing so, hopefully address some of the queries we regularly see. Once the full details go live we will share the link here. Thanks, Sophie 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Harrison Posted November 24, 2023 Share Posted November 24, 2023 1 hour ago, Alamy said: Remember that searchable information also includes the ‘optional information’; number of people, property, date taken, location, primary and secondary categories. Thanks for this follow up, I'm hoping that Alamy might also be informing us how these primary and secondary categories are used in searches. Certainly they don't seem to be part of the public-facing search with the additional consequence that contributors can't test to see if their images come up in the right company, as you can with captions and keywords of course. I think many find the current list rather awkward to use, it's often difficullt to add just one category meaningfully, let alone two, and there has been no guidance on how to use them from Alamy since they were introduced. Quite a few of us posted suggestions as to how they might be improved, or new categories that could be added as a consequence of new topical priorities - climate change, green energy etc etc., but there was no response from Alamy. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alamy Posted November 24, 2023 Share Posted November 24, 2023 Hi @Harry Harrison apologies, in my haste I mentioned all the areas which count as metadata, but the categories can't currently be used for search as a customer. However, they may be used to link customers to specific collections, and are used in reporting to help us understand better search data and customer activity. As mentioned we will be posting about plans for 2024 and beyond - so watch this space! Thanks Sophie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Harrison Posted November 24, 2023 Share Posted November 24, 2023 9 minutes ago, Alamy said: As mentioned we will be posting about plans for 2024 and beyond - so watch this space! Thanks Sophie, brilliant! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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