Measures not adding up

[Brizbee]

Hi all, got a bit of a strange one here.

 

At the start of August my views total in Measures was 9276. It is now standing at 9862 which would suggest I have had 586 views in that time. Trouble is when I key in the dates from 1st Aug to present it only says I have had 382 views, 204 short. When I went looking through my pseudonyms I noticed I had views recorded but with no search term. However, adding those views up only produced 100, so still 104 short.

 

How is it possible that views can be recorded if no search term was used for them? And where are the other 104 phantom views? Anybody else seeing this in their measures?

[Marianne]

Not having your issue (my views have gone from 1,000 to 1,001 in a day or so (a modest jump, to put it mildly), however, I've encountered a somewhat related issue:

 

There was a discussion a week or so ago about views without any search terms. When you brought it up again, I tried to get to the end of my "views" to see If I'd had any similar (no search term) views when I found another glitch in Measures:

 

When I go into my primary pseudo in Measures to view the search terms viewed and zoomed for the rolling month  and  tick on the box Results per Page to increase it to 100 from 20, I constantly get an error page with the message, "Sorry, we've encountered an unexpected error."  If I page backwards from there, the results per page now shows 100 but the page still only gives me 20 actual results although there are hundreds more views in my main pseudo - and I'm left with way too many pages to click through. 

 

Anyone else have that issue?

 

Clearly there's a lot in Measures that isn't working properly. 

[IanDavidson]

Frankly, I think Measures is a broad brush tool.  There seems, to me, to be too many glitches and inaccuracies to consider it a totally reliable data source.  It may well be right the majority of the time but if it is not right all the time it’s usage is more about trends than accurate, daily data,

[Sultanpepa]

13 hours ago, Marianne said:

Not having your issue (my views have gone from 1,000 to 1,001 in a day or so (a modest jump, to put it mildly), however, I've encountered a somewhat related issue:

 

There was a discussion a week or so ago about views without any search terms. When you brought it up again, I tried to get to the end of my "views" to see If I'd had any similar (no search term) views when I found another glitch in Measures:

 

When I go into my primary pseudo in Measures to view the search terms viewed and zoomed for the rolling month  and  tick on the box Results per Page to increase it to 100 from 20, I constantly get an error page with the message, "Sorry, we've encountered an unexpected error."  If I page backwards from there, the results per page now shows 100 but the page still only gives me 20 actual results although there are hundreds more views in my main pseudo - and I'm left with way too many pages to click through. 

 

Anyone else have that issue?

 

Clearly there's a lot in Measures that isn't working properly. 

 

I e-mailed customer services about this very same issue after the last broken measures issue. Chantelle said it was "a glitch" in the system when measures came back online. The glitch ruined my CTR for the month which incidentally was my best months of the year. Subsequent e-mails about this have went unanswered.  

[Steve F]

Isn't this all a bit of a red herring? As long as you're getting sales, measures is not really relevant. Especially if you've been doing it for years so you have a good idea of what sells and how to keyword etc.

[Tony ALS]

16 minutes ago, Steve F said:

Isn't this all a bit of a red herring? As long as you're getting sales, measures is not really relevant. Especially if you've been doing it for years so you have a good idea of what sells and how to keyword etc.

I agree Steve that it probably isn't that important as long as you're getting sales. The suspicion is that when it doesn't seem to be functioning properly and no sales are coming through the assumption correctly or incorrectly is that the algorithm is working against you. 

I have seen wild variations in the number of views reported this year. This week 64 more reported today, yesterday 887 (!) from Monday to Tuesday and an additional 256 on Monday.

Fortunately a few zooms have kept my CTR up but I guess we'll never know how important any of this is.

I had got used to about 150 views a day when I had far fewer images.

3 sales so far this month so ticking along.

[IKuzmin]

29 minutes ago, Steve F said:

Isn't this all a bit of a red herring? As long as you're getting sales, measures is not really relevant. Especially if you've been doing it for years so you have a good idea of what sells and how to keyword etc.

To me these "glitches" suggest that if search algorithm is associated with the same, it is also broken, and as such my images may not be shown to customers in proper order (or not shown at all given that nobody goes beyond the 1st page).

[Steve F]

1 minute ago, IKuzmin said:

if

 

Big IF. Will be totally separate coding. It could be possible that search is broken, but who knows, this is just speculation. Have you had problems with display of your images when you search?

[IKuzmin]

1 hour ago, Steve F said:

Big IF. Will be totally separate coding. It could be possible that search is broken, but who knows, this is just speculation. 

Is not this a demagogy? As well as my initial post though. However, what i see during the last several months is that the number of my views decreased by ~20% which I consider is suggestive for algorithm changes if not glitches.

I know, you are up, and good luck with this. 

Edited August 9, 2023 by IKuzmin

[Steve F]

1 minute ago, IKuzmin said:

Is not this a demagogy?

 

not sure what you mean by this

 

2 minutes ago, IKuzmin said:

What i see this year is that my sales are decreasing progressively. Moreover, if I used to have CTR ~1.2 for a while (well over a couple of last years), more recently it decreased substantially. Zooms and sales for the last 2-3 months are also down.

 

Sorry to hear that. Are you uploading / increasing your portfolio size in the same amount that you did in previous years? Any other factors you might have changed, such as license type? 

All my images are RM, are your RM?

[M.Chapman]

1 hour ago, Steve F said:

Isn't this all a bit of a red herring? As long as you're getting sales, measures is not really relevant. Especially if you've been doing it for years so you have a good idea of what sells and how to keyword etc.

If... the same Alamy measures results we see are used to calculate CTR% and if CTR% is used in the calculation of a contributor's Alamy rank, which then determines the placement of their images, I'd say the accuracy of Alamy measures is VERY relevant...

 

Mark

Edited August 9, 2023 by M.Chapman

[Steve F]

3 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

If... the same Alamy measures results we see are used to calculate CTR% and if CTR% is used in the calculation of a contributor's Alamy rank, which then determines the placement of their images, I'd say the accuracy of Alamy measures is VERY relevant...

 

True enough. I just find it very weird that Measures / CTR seems to be working for some people and not for others. Alamy is surely not selectively picking contributors. So there must be some other factors.

[Steve F]

7 hours ago, IanDavidson said:

Frankly, I think Measures is a broad brush tool.  There seems, to me, to be too many glitches and inaccuracies to consider it a totally reliable data source.  It may well be right the majority of the time but if it is not right all the time it’s usage is more about trends than accurate, daily data,

 

+1

Edited August 9, 2023 by Steve F

[DJ Myford]

2 hours ago, Steve F said:

 

True enough. I just find it very weird that Measures / CTR seems to be working for some people and not for others. Alamy is surely not selectively picking contributors. So there must be some other factors.

Sales may initially hold up due to images already on client lightboxes. Once those licences wash through the system, the effects of a drop in CTR could become apparent. That is of course speculation, but that's all we have in the absence of meaningful communication from A.

[Ognyan Yosifov]

deleted

Edited August 19, 2023 by Ognyan Yosifov