Views and Zooms have dropped to near zero

[mwakeling]

For some reason, my usually pretty good CTR has plummeted for April and May. I have had sales. Has something changed in Alamy's search algorithm?

[Shergar]

8 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

OK I think I've got it now. I repeated what I think you've done and don't see clipping at 100 all the time (try sorting by the views column by clicking at the top so the highest no of views appear 1st). I assume the lists in your screenshot were sorted by search term? In which case, could it possibly be just down to chance that the first searches listed on 27th Jun are ones where the customer only looked at the first page (that is very common). Try sorting by the Total Views column.

 

 

 

Mark

 

 

So Since 27th July 2022 if my images don't show up in the first 100 veiws they don't  get seen. It doesn't matter what way I sort the total views column its 100 and has been for nearly a year now day in day out . So on the 6th June 2023 (the last views information I have) out of 9400 images I got 16 views because any other views would have not been in the first 100.

 

https://www.selbyphotography.com/Alamy-summary-june-2022/i-XqJ4bs9/A

Great for CTR but not for sells 

Edited June 8, 2023 by Shergar

[M.Chapman]

On 08/06/2023 at 15:19, Shergar said:

So Since 27th July 2022 if my images don't show up in the first 100 veiws they don't  get seen. It doesn't matter what way I sort the total views column its 100 and has been for nearly a year now day in day out . So on the 6th June 2023 (the last views information I have) out of 9400 images I got 16 views because any other views would have not been in the first 100.

 

https://www.selbyphotography.com/Alamy-summary-june-2022/i-XqJ4bs9/A

Great for CTR but not for sells 

Very strange... As you can see from the screenshots I posted, I'm not seeing that. I wonder if it's a regional thing? UK = OK, USA not? There's a gremlin somewhere?

 

Update - I do see the effect in May 2023. But I also see multiple entries for the same search term. Close inspection shows that each page of 100 images viewed during a single search is being reported on a new line. Others (e.g. NYCat) have already reported seeing similar. If so CTR% will be correct.

 

Mark

Edited June 15, 2023 by M.Chapman

[Shergar]

On 08/06/2023 at 10:28, M.Chapman said:

Very steange... As you can see from the screenshots I posted, I'm not seeing that. I wonder if it's a regional thing? UK = OK, USA not? There's a gremlin somewhere?

 

Update - I do see the effect in May 2023. But I also see multiple entries for the same search term. Close inspection shows that each page of 100 images viewed during a single search is being reported on a new line. Others (e.g. NYCat) have already reported seeing similar. If so CTR% will be correct.

 

Mark

Im not sure how looking at A of A explains this unless Im missing something . These are  my figures from June 8th 2023 As you can see if my images don't show up in the first 100 then they don't show up at all . These are the views from my 9400 images I used to get more views when I only had 500 images on Alamy.

Search Term Your Views Sessions Your Zooms Your Sales Your CTR(%) Total Views Total Zooms Total CTR(%) wildflower garden 2 1 0 0 0.00 100 0 0.00 San Andreas Fault 1 1 0 0 0.00 100 0 0.00 San Andreas Fault 5 1 0 0 0.00 100 0 0.00 ipad 1 1 0 0 0.00 100 0 0.00 egg timer 1 1 0 0 0.00 100 0 0.00 chartwell 1 1 0 0 0.00 100 0 0.00 cabin fire mountains 2 1 0 0 0.00 100 0 0.00

 

[NYCat]

Go to All of Alamy and search for "wildflower garden". I suspect you will see more than 100 views. Try each of the search terms to get a more realistic idea of what people are seeing.

 

Paulette

[Shergar]

55 minutes ago, NYCat said:

Go to All of Alamy and search for "wildflower garden". I suspect you will see more than 100 views. Try each of the search terms to get a more realistic idea of what people are seeing.

 

Paulette

Hi Paulette thanks for helping out . When I check "wildflower garden" for that date with A of A it got 320 views. Here is what I might be misunderstanding. Out of 320 views in A of A my images only show in the first 100 of those 320 and thats my concern. It never happened before the end of June last year but has remained like this for nearly a year now. Before then my views would have looked very similar to Marks that he posted earlier .

 

Edit. My question to Alamy is why have you capped my image views to the first 100 only in a customers search?

 Duncan

Edited June 11, 2023 by Shergar

[Broad Norfolk]

8 hours ago, Shergar said:

Hi Paulette thanks for helping out . When I check "wildflower garden" for that date with A of A it got 320 views. Here is what I might be misunderstanding. Out of 320 views in A of A my images only show in the first 100 of those 320 and thats my concern. It never happened before the end of June last year but has remained like this for nearly a year now. Before then my views would have looked very similar to Marks that he posted earlier .

 

Edit. My question to Alamy is why have you capped my image views to the first 100 only in a customers search?

 Duncan

This has been a concern of mine for a while now which points to many individual's low views and sales. I do suspect that many Contributors images are not even seen these days sad to say.

Jim

[Brian Yarvin]

I'm still seeing zero zooms. CTR is 0.00.

[NYCat]

13 hours ago, Shergar said:

Hi Paulette thanks for helping out . When I check "wildflower garden" for that date with A of A it got 320 views. Here is what I might be misunderstanding. Out of 320 views in A of A my images only show in the first 100 of those 320 and thats my concern. It never happened before the end of June last year but has remained like this for nearly a year now. Before then my views would have looked very similar to Marks that he posted earlier .

 

Edit. My question to Alamy is why have you capped my image views to the first 100 only in a customers search?

 Duncan

 

I see what you mean. I've been assuming that the count in All of Alamy is the accurate one. 

 

Paulette

[Shergar]

50 minutes ago, NYCat said:

 

I see what you mean. I've been assuming that the count in All of Alamy is the accurate one. 

 

Paulette

I first noticed this 1st July 2022 I suspect not many other contributors have noticed it. My concern and question is, that by limiting the amount of total views that are seen by the customer are alamy forcing some of the  contributors that are in the gold group down into the silver?

 

• From the 1 July 2021, Alamy will monitor the total Licence Fees in respect of your Content in each Revenue Year.
• If you register for an Account after the 1 July in any one Revenue Year: (i) you will automatically be subject to Alamy Gold; and (ii) Alamy will not monitor your Licence Fees and clause 12.12 will not apply until the following Revenue Year.
• At the end of each Revenue Year if your total Licence Fees for that year, net of any refunds:
  • are less than $250 then the Alamy Commission for sales of your Content in the following Revenue Year will automatically switch to Alamy Silver as outlined in the Alamy Commission Table

Interesting to see what happens 1st July 

 

Duncan

PS. Whats the betting this gets deleted Lol

Edited June 12, 2023 by Shergar

[Alexander Hogg]

4 minutes ago, Shergar said:

I first noticed this 1st July 2022 I suspect not many other contributors have noticed it. My concern and question is, that by limiting the amount of total views that are seen by the customer are alamy forcing some of the  contributors that are in the gold group down into the silver?

 

• From the 1 July 2021, Alamy will monitor the total Licence Fees in respect of your Content in each Revenue Year.
• If you register for an Account after the 1 July in any one Revenue Year: (i) you will automatically be subject to Alamy Gold; and (ii) Alamy will not monitor your Licence Fees and clause 12.12 will not apply until the following Revenue Year.
• At the end of each Revenue Year if your total Licence Fees for that year, net of any refunds:
  • are less than $250 then the Alamy Commission for sales of your Content in the following Revenue Year will automatically switch to Alamy Silver as outlined in the Alamy Commission Table

Interesting to see what happens 1st July 

 

Duncan

PS. Whats the betting this gets deleted Lol

Correct I was in Gold the first year then went to Silver and as from 25 May this year have been moved back up to Gold Don't know how long that will last As said depends on sales throughout the year 

[M.Chapman]

3 hours ago, Shergar said:

I first noticed this 1st July 2022 I suspect not many other contributors have noticed it. My concern and question is, that by limiting the amount of total views that are seen by the customer are alamy forcing some of the  contributors that are in the gold group down into the silver?

 

I don't think they are limiting the views to 100. Around May/June last year two things happened.

 

(1) There was a rerank - this may have significantly altered the number of views being received (mine doubled whereas a friend of mine's halved)

(2) Alamy's website search results page and view reporting software changed. The old grid view has gone, and views involving more than one page of image results now appear to be reported on multiple lines in Alamy measures (Your images). NB. But still on one line in Alamy Measures (All of Alamy).

 

Try the following.

Check your views in Alamy Measures views for a single day

Sort by the Search term column

Scroll down the list until you find adjacent lines with same search term. (If you don't find any try another day)

Take the first line - Click on the underlined view count for your images to see which of your images was actually viewed and write down the Alamy ref(s)

Take the second line - Click on the underlined view count for your images to see which of your images was actually viewed and write down the Alamy ref(s)

If I do this I see different images of mine were viewed on each page of 100 results, showing that results for a single search are now being reported on multiple lines. 

 

Checking the same search in AoA for the same date will show the total number of images viewed on a single line.

 

Mark

Edited June 12, 2023 by M.Chapman

[Reimar]

I still have to wonder why about 95% of the Total Views is 100.  Even when a search is repeated 2 or 3 times, they're all 100.  I suppose that this is a record keeping glitch that only skews the Total CTR.

[M.Chapman]

3 hours ago, Reimar said:

I still have to wonder why about 95% of the Total Views is 100.  Even when a search is repeated 2 or 3 times, they're all 100.  I suppose that this is a record keeping glitch that only skews the Total CTR.

A couple of theories?

Maybe with 350M images 95% of searches now return more pages of results than the customer looks at so they never see the last page (<100 images)?

Alternatively, with 350M images if a contributor gets views reported in common searches they must have a reasonable ranking and so none of their images are on the last pages so those pages are no longer logged in the new line by line results?

 

Mark (Just thinking aloud). 

Edited June 12, 2023 by M.Chapman

[Allan Bell]

My views have suddenly dropped dramatically this month and zooms are at nil.

 

Allan

 

[IKuzmin]

2 hours ago, Allan Bell said:

My views have suddenly dropped dramatically this month and zooms are at nil.

Same here. 

[Shergar]

On 12/06/2023 at 08:04, M.Chapman said:

I don't think they are limiting the views to 100. Around May/June last year two things happened.

 

(1) There was a rerank - this may have significantly altered the number of views being received (mine doubled whereas a friend of mine's halved)

(2) Alamy's website search results page and view reporting software changed. The old grid view has gone, and views involving more than one page of image results now appear to be reported on multiple lines in Alamy measures (Your images). NB. But still on one line in Alamy Measures (All of Alamy).

 

Try the following.

Check your views in Alamy Measures views for a single day

Sort by the Search term column

Scroll down the list until you find adjacent lines with same search term. (If you don't find any try another day)

Take the first line - Click on the underlined view count for your images to see which of your images was actually viewed and write down the Alamy ref(s)

Take the second line - Click on the underlined view count for your images to see which of your images was actually viewed and write down the Alamy ref(s)

If I do this I see different images of mine were viewed on each page of 100 results, showing that results for a single search are now being reported on multiple lines. 

 

Checking the same search in AoA for the same date will show the total number of images viewed on a single line.

 

Mark

Hi Mark once again a big thank you for your help. 

I did as you said and when I found 2 lines with the same search term they had a different Alamy reference (very very few) and so become part of the search under 100 that would not have been seen if they had been over 100.

 

Check this out Mark. Using your screenshot  for Bridget Riley you had 2 views out of a total of 581, lets say they appeared in 200th place out of a total of 581. Had that been me that would have not shown up at all as all my results are capped at 100.

 

Thanks Duncan

[M.Chapman]

1 hour ago, Shergar said:

Hi Mark once again a big thank you for your help. 

I did as you said and when I found 2 lines with the same search term they had a different Alamy reference (very very few) and so become part of the search under 100 that would not have been seen if they had been over 100.

 

Check this out Mark. Using your screenshot  for Bridget Riley you had 2 views out of a total of 581, lets say they appeared in 200th place out of a total of 581. Had that been me that would have not shown up at all as all my results are capped at 100.

 

Thanks Duncan

Hi Shergar,

 

The screenshot with the Bridget Riley entry is from from 27th July 2022 (because you suggested we look at that date). This screenshot doesn't show the 100 cap - maybe Alamy rolled out the new software later in the UK than in US?

 

But, as I stated earlier, if I look at later months, I do see the 100 cap together with the multiple line entries associated with a single search. Here's an example from my account on 1st July 2022.

 

 

 

Mark

[Shergar]

21 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

Hi Shergar,

 

The screenshot with the Bridget Riley entry is from from 27th July 2022 (because you suggested we look at that date). This screenshot doesn't show the 100 cap - maybe Alamy rolled out the new software later in the UK than in US?

 

But, as I stated earlier, if I look at later months, I do see the 100 cap together with the multiple line entries associated with a single search. Here's an example from my account on 1st July 2022.

 

 

 

Mark

Thanks Mark that's how it is now I guess and pretty much  what I have been getting for the last year. 

[M.Chapman]

41 minutes ago, Shergar said:

Thanks Mark that's how it is now I guess and pretty much  what I have been getting for the last year. 

Do you see multiple lines with the same search term? If so I think it indicates that customers are viewing your images on later pages and they are being recorded. CTR should therefore be correct. It's interesting you see the change to the "100 cap" a few days earlier than I do, suggesting that Alamy may have rolled out their new software in USA before the UK.

 

Mark

[Shergar]

On 13/06/2023 at 12:28, M.Chapman said:

Do you see multiple lines with the same search term? If so I think it indicates that customers are viewing your images on later pages and they are being recorded. CTR should therefore be correct. It's interesting you see the change to the "100 cap" a few days earlier than I do, suggesting that Alamy may have rolled out their new software in USA before the UK.

 

Mark

Here is a good example of the problem as I see it 

This is from A of A on the 14th June 2023 amongst other searches came "dog"

Search Term	UCO	Sales	Zooms	Views	CTR (%)
dog	5	0	0	409	0.00

 

 

Here are my views for the same day. Notice no dog search (i have plenty of dog images). You see no dog search  because my first dog picture is not in the first 100 of the 409. it might be 102 but it doesn't get seen by the customer. The hawaiian canoe search behaves exactly as you said but with dog it isn't able to show in the searches at all. So out of my total 9400 images the customer will only ever see those that are in the first 100. 

Search Term	Your Views	Sessions	Your Zooms	Your Sales	Your CTR(%)	Total Views	Total Zooms	Total CTR(%)
tajin	3	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
tajin	5	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
long beach	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	1	1.00
hawaiian canoe	5	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
hawaiian canoe	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
hawaiian canoe	2	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
hawaiian canoe	5	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
el dorado	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	1	1.00
crape myrtle	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	1	1.00
california liquor store	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	4	4.00

Edited June 15, 2023 by Shergar

[M.Chapman]

2 hours ago, Shergar said:

Here is a good example of the problem as I see it 

This is from A of A on the 14th June 2023 amongst other searches came "dog"

Search Term	UCO	Sales	Zooms	Views	CTR (%)
dog	5	0	0	409	0.00

 

 

Here are my views for the same day. Notice no dog search (i have plenty of dog images). You see no dog search  because my first dog picture is not in the first 100 of the 409. it might be 102 but it doesn't get seen by the customer. The hawaiian canoe search behaves exactly as you said but with dog it isn't able to show in the searches at all. So out of my total 9400 images the customer will only ever see those that are in the first 100. 

Search Term	Your Views	Sessions	Your Zooms	Your Sales	Your CTR(%)	Total Views	Total Zooms	Total CTR(%)
tajin	3	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
tajin	5	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
long beach	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	1	1.00
hawaiian canoe	5	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
hawaiian canoe	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
hawaiian canoe	2	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
hawaiian canoe	5	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
el dorado	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	1	1.00
crape myrtle	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	1	1.00
california liquor store	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	4	4.00

 

You'd need a very good Alamy rank to get an image shown on page 1 for such a broad search as "dog", (which returns 2.5M images). If you want to investigate your Alamy rank, try the BHZ test.

 

2 hours ago, Shergar said:

So out of my total 9400 images the customer will only ever see those that are in the first 100. 

 

Err... why do you say that? Your hawaiian canoe images have clearly been viewed on four different pages (as shown by the results table you posted above). If I repeat the search for "hawaiian canoe" I see  1 of your canoe images on Page 3,  and several more on Page 7, etc.  and these have been seen by customer and recorded your views table above. Clicking on the underlined search term in the table shows which of your images were viewed on different pages.

 

Mark

Edited June 15, 2023 by M.Chapman

[IKuzmin]

2 hours ago, Shergar said:

Here is a good example of the problem as I see it 

This is from A of A on the 14th June 2023 amongst other searches came "dog"

Search Term	UCO	Sales	Zooms	Views	CTR (%)
dog	5	0	0	409	0.00

 

 

Here are my views for the same day. Notice no dog search (i have plenty of dog images). You see no dog search  because my first dog picture is not in the first 100 of the 409. it might be 102 but it doesn't get seen by the customer. The hawaiian canoe search behaves exactly as you said but with dog it isn't able to show in the searches at all. So out of my total 9400 images the customer will only ever see those that are in the first 100. 

Search Term	Your Views	Sessions	Your Zooms	Your Sales	Your CTR(%)	Total Views	Total Zooms	Total CTR(%)
tajin	3	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
tajin	5	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
long beach	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	1	1.00
hawaiian canoe	5	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
hawaiian canoe	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
hawaiian canoe	2	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
hawaiian canoe	5	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
el dorado	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	1	1.00
crape myrtle	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	1	1.00
california liquor store	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	4	4.00

Am not sure if I'm mistaken but for the "dog" in AoA I see 5 separate customers, I assume 5 separate searches, likely each no more than 100 (am not sure though how they came up to 409 total). In this scenario, if your first dog is No 101, it would not be seen in any of these 5 searches, no?

[Shergar]

2 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

 

You'd need a very good Alamy rank to get an image shown on page 1 for such a broad search as "dog", (which returns 2.5M images). If you want to investigate your Alamy rank, try the BHZ test.

 

 

Err... why do you say that? Your hawaiian canoe images have clearly been viewed on four different pages (as shown by the results table you posted above). If I repeat the search for "hawaiian canoe" I see  1 of your canoe images on Page 3,  and several more on Page 7, etc.  and these have been seen by customer and recorded your views table above. Clicking on the underlined search term in the table shows which of your images were viewed on different pages.

 

Mark

So out of my total 9400 images the customer will only ever see those that are in the first 100. 

 

Err... why do you say that? 

Search Term	Your Views	Sessions	Your Zooms	Your Sales	Your CTR(%)	Total Views	Total Zooms	Total CTR(%)
tajin	3	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
tajin	5	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
long beach	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	1	1.00
hawaiian canoe	5	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
hawaiian canoe	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
hawaiian canoe	2	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
hawaiian canoe	5	1	0	0	0.00	100	0	0.00
el dorado	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	1	1.00
crape myrtle	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	1	1.00
california liquor store	1	1	0	0	0.00	100	4	4.00

 

Thats it! its not a crop of my figures. Just 6 search terms returned from over  9000 images for one day 25 views total . I Used to get 100-300. It seems a lot of work for 25 views. You have 5400 images so how many search terms and views did those generate on the 14th June 2023.

 

[M.Chapman]

12 hours ago, Shergar said:

You have 5400 images so how many search terms and views did those generate on the 14th June 2023.

 

I got 252 views on that day. A bit higher than usual. I'm currently averaging between 500 to 900 views per week. If the number of views you're getting suddenly dropped around middle of last year, then I'd say it's most likely due to a change in your Alamy rank and has nothing to do with the way views are being reported (now 1 page of 100 views at a time).

Alamy's calculation of our Alamy rank is something I dislike. A contributor can be steadily building a business, contributing more images, seeing growth in sales, and then boom! Suddenly Alamy recalculates everyone's rank (based on their "secret" algorithm) and some contributors' views (and hence sales and business) can almost disappear overnight. Others may see a sudden increase. It's not a good way to encourage contributors to see Alamy as a "long term business partner".  It wouldn't be so bad if reranks were carried out regularly and based on an openly presented algorithm. At the moment all we really know is that CTR% is important. Unfortunately as the number of images and contributors has grown I suspect the rerank calculation has become less stable. If a contributor has a high Alamy rank, they will get more views (including from single word searches) driving down their CTR%. Then, when there's a rerank their Alamy rank will drop. They are then less likely to have views from broad single word searches, so their CTR% is likely to rise and at the next re-rank their rank will rise again. Due to the large number of images and contributors, even a small change in Alamy rank now has a massive effect on views. A few years back (when rank was re-calculated regularly) I saw my rank and views oscillate. I was lucky that my rank improved at the last re-rank (12 months ago) and has been stuck there ever since. But at the next re-rank I may suffer again.

 

Now that there are so many images and contributors on Alamy, having a good Alamy rank is crucial to getting views and sales. The best advice seems to be keep an eye on CTR% and try to improve it so that, if and when there's a rerank, you'll benefit. But how to maintain a high CTR%?? Oh that's easy (I wish!!)... Only submit saleable images of popular but niche subjects with minimal duplicates and include accurate and concise keywording (no keyword spamming), and then pray for the next rerank. 

 

My current CTR% is currently varying between 0.8% and 0.6%. Whilst I have a relatively good Alamy rank I probably ought to go through and remove or reprocess some of my worst images, delete duplicates and revisit the keywords to improve my CTR%. I have made some changes to a few images, but with licence fees dropping (in part due to Alamy's pile 'em high sell 'em cheap tendency) it's hard to justify the time.

 

Mark

Edited June 16, 2023 by M.Chapman

[Cal]

5 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

At the moment all we really know is that CTR% is important.

 

Well up until a few months ago my CTR from pretty much the day I started was always terrible. Some months I was lucky to get 1 zoom. Sales history has always been "not bad" though for the amount of images in port, so I never worried over it. A few months ago something changed and I now get many more zooms per month and a resulting much higher CTR, around the alamy average, which is literally 5x the CTR I had for the longest time. I can't say sales volume has massively increased, though perhaps coincidentally I'm getting less microstock $0.xx value sales. Those aren't bad per-se, but with the volume we get at Alamy they don't work for me. In short I've seen a net improvement in various metrics.

 

So certainly in my case, having a low CTR didn't hinder me. Something has changed and now more of my images are being clicked, and I'm no longer seeing almost exclusively penny sales.