Anyone else find their images appearing in irrelevant searches in Alamy measures?

[Sally Robertson]

Yesterday I discovered 3 Australian bird images of mine had appeared in searches involving the keywords:

 

found not guilty [USA]

found not guilty [USA] [Europe]

found not guilty [WOP]

 

Clearly my images have nothing to do with the subject matter searched. The only common keyword with my images is the word "found" which I had used in the caption. The keywords "not" and "guilty" do not appear in my captions or keywords.

 

I guess the main concern is whether it affects my CTR given my images are appearing in searches in which they are a clearly irrelevant subject matter. Also at the moment the total views for these searches is showing as 100, but it is for most of my views which suggests to me the 100 might be a glitch, so it might be that my bird images are actually appearing a few pages in.

 

I am just puzzled as to why, given only one common keyword, they would appear? But perhaps that is just an unavoidable quirk of the search algorithm.

 

Has anyone else found similar anomalies?

[wiskerke]

53 minutes ago, Sally Robertson said:

Yesterday I discovered 3 Australian bird images of mine had appeared in searches involving the keywords:

 

found not guilty [USA]

found not guilty [USA] [Europe]

found not guilty [WOP]

 

Clearly my images have nothing to do with the subject matter searched. The only common keyword with my images is the word "found" which I had used in the caption. The keywords "not" and "guilty" do not appear in my captions or keywords.

 

I guess the main concern is whether it affects my CTR given my images are appearing in searches in which they are a clearly irrelevant subject matter. Also at the moment the total views for these searches is showing as 100, but it is for most of my views which suggests to me the 100 might be a glitch, so it might be that my bird images are actually appearing a few pages in.

 

I am just puzzled as to why, given only one common keyword, they would appear? But perhaps that is just an unavoidable quirk of the search algorithm.

 

Has anyone else found similar anomalies?

 

This is so funny!

Try: Fairywren NOT blue.

The NOT gives it away. It's a Boolean expression in a search.

In  the Fairywren case, your bird should not come up, because you have blue in your caption or keywords.

Fairywren NOT car NOT crocodile NOT liverwurst will get you the same results as just Fairywren.

But Fairywren NOT blue will give you a different result.

 

wim

 

edit: I was wrong: there happens to be an image of a Fairywren with a car. So the outcome is not exactly the same. No crocodiles or liverwurst though.

Edited January 27 by wiskerke

[Rebecca Ore]

2 hours ago, Sally Robertson said:

Yesterday I discovered 3 Australian bird images of mine had appeared in searches involving the keywords:

 

found not guilty [USA]

found not guilty [USA] [Europe]

found not guilty [WOP]

 

Clearly my images have nothing to do with the subject matter searched. The only common keyword with my images is the word "found" which I had used in the caption. The keywords "not" and "guilty" do not appear in my captions or keywords.

 

I guess the main concern is whether it affects my CTR given my images are appearing in searches in which they are a clearly irrelevant subject matter. Also at the moment the total views for these searches is showing as 100, but it is for most of my views which suggests to me the 100 might be a glitch, so it might be that my bird images are actually appearing a few pages in.

 

I am just puzzled as to why, given only one common keyword, they would appear? But perhaps that is just an unavoidable quirk of the search algorithm.

 

Has anyone else found similar anomalies?

 

Alamy search will pull various keywords words from captions and put them together to match a search item.  Eggshell are used to admend acid soils, no soil in the photo.   And, yeah, it's irritating.   I can correct some keywords, but this scrambling, especially if adding words in neither keywords or caption, is annoying.

[Sally Robertson]

Thanks Wim and Rebecca.

 

 I think I’m getting it now with the NOT.

 

In my case it was not the fairywren that appeared in the search but two of a yellow-rumped thornbill and one of a willie wagtail. But, yes, it seems something to do with the “found NOT guilty”. I could remove “found” from the captions and reword it somehow, though I may introduce other anomalies depending how I word it! It’s very easy it seems to inadvertently make images appear in irrelevant searches. I can see the person doing the “found not guilty” search scratching their head and looking befuddled when they see the results 🤔

[M.Chapman]

17 hours ago, wiskerke said:

 

This is so funny!

Try: Fairywren NOT blue.

The NOT gives it away. It's a Boolean expression in a search.

In  the Fairywren case, your bird should not come up, because you have blue in your caption or keywords.

Fairywren NOT car NOT crocodile NOT liverwurst will get you the same results as just Fairywren.

But Fairywren NOT blue will give you a different result.

 

wim

 

edit: I was wrong: there happens to be an image of a Fairywren with a car. So the outcome is not exactly the same. No crocodiles or liverwurst though.

Interesting. I thought the NOT, OR & AND were only supposed to work as logical operators if entered in capitals into the search phrase...So why did the found not guilty search go wrong?

 

Mark

Edited January 28 by M.Chapman

[Rebecca Ore]

4 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

Interesting. I thought the NOT, OR & AND were only supposed to work as logical operators if entered in capitals into the search phrase...So why did the found not guilty search go wrong?

 

Mark

 

If the search programmers allow both capitals and lower case without allowing for the logical operators as something NOT a keyword, then the logical operators will be treated as normal words, I suspect.  

[Sally Robertson]

4 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

Interesting. I thought the NOT, OR & AND were only supposed to work as logical operators if entered in capitals into the search phrase...So why did the found not guilty search go wrong?

 

Mark

 

Hi Mark, yes, it was definitely a lower case "not" in the info in Alamy Measures, so it does seem strange that it would bring up my irrelevant bird images.

 

Perhaps it is as Rebecca suggests, that there isn't a distinguishing occurring between capitals and lower case. I'm assuming there was at some point? Maybe there are Alamy guidelines for searchers that would give some clues.

 

I guess I'll just have a look at other views as they appear to see if anything else illogical pops up.

[wiskerke]

7 hours ago, Sally Robertson said:

 

Hi Mark, yes, it was definitely a lower case "not" in the info in Alamy Measures, so it does seem strange that it would bring up my irrelevant bird images.

 

Perhaps it is as Rebecca suggests, that there isn't a distinguishing occurring between capitals and lower case. I'm assuming there was at some point? Maybe there are Alamy guidelines for searchers that would give some clues.

 

I guess I'll just have a look at other views as they appear to see if anything else illogical pops up.

Distinguishing between capitals and lower case - That's an easy test. Just try a search with and without and see if there's a difference.

Anything else illogical - Most logical operators are forbidden as a regular search word and/or are being ignored. However some strange things have popped up before. At the moment my gripe is that if I click on a search phrase in AoA, like Taylor Swift, I get 348 images. While when I type Taylor Swift in the search box I get 35,353 images. A hundred times more. It turns out the page adds a + sign in between keywords. In stead of a space. Why a plus sign %2B and not %20 a space? Anyway some contributors don't trust the system and are including a + sign in their keywords just in case. Those are the 348 Taylor Swift images.

 

wim

[Sally Robertson]

2 hours ago, wiskerke said:

Distinguishing between capitals and lower case - That's an easy test. Just try a search with and without and see if there's a difference.

Anything else illogical - Most logical operators are forbidden as a regular search word and/or are being ignored. However some strange things have popped up before. At the moment my gripe is that if I click on a search phrase in AoA, like Taylor Swift, I get 348 images. While when I type Taylor Swift in the search box I get 35,353 images. A hundred times more. It turns out the page adds a + sign in between keywords. In stead of a space. Why a plus sign %2B and not %20 a space? Anyway some contributors don't trust the system and are including a + sign in their keywords just in case. Those are the 348 Taylor Swift images.

 

wim

 

Hi Wim, yes just tried with and without capitals and the same results came up. I didn't see my bird images in the first few pages either so it looks like the people searching must have gone quite a few pages in. "Found not guilty" is probably a bit too abstract for what they are looking for. They perhaps need something more concrete about people leaving court after proceedings or something, a specific case etc to get the type of image they are looking for.

 

I remember seeing the + sign in some keywords a while back so now I know why.

 

Cheers,

Sally

[NYCat]

It just seems inevitable that words that don't really belong together will be picked up in searches. Someone looking for York University saw my photo of a restaurant on University Place in New York. Measures also shows only 2 views for that search so one wonders what kind of filters were used.

 

Paulette

[Harry Harrison]

19 hours ago, Sally Robertson said:

Maybe there are Alamy guidelines for searchers that would give some clues.

I had always imagined that the Boolean operators should be upper case but never looked into it. This September 2023 blog post by Sophie Basilevitch is entitled "How to think like a Picture Researcher and find the content you’re looking for on Alamy" and shows them used in lower case though, whilst paradoxically linking to an article that shows them in upper case.

Edited January 29 by Harry Harrison

[wiskerke]

9 hours ago, Sally Robertson said:

 

Hi Wim, yes just tried with and without capitals and the same results came up. I didn't see my bird images in the first few pages either so it looks like the people searching must have gone quite a few pages in. "Found not guilty" is probably a bit too abstract for what they are looking for. They perhaps need something more concrete about people leaving court after proceedings or something, a specific case etc to get the type of image they are looking for.

 

I remember seeing the + sign in some keywords a while back so now I know why.

 

Cheers,

Sally

To see what people are probably looking for, try Found not guilty in Google images.

Hopefully clients who come up empty handed on Alamy, will go to Google and then come back with a link. Not in this case I'm afraid. Only one Alamy image on the whole very long page.

The way to search for such a thing here (and in general) is to put quotation marks around the phrase: 2,134 results for "Found not guilty" Not at all bad. I like the Google results a bit better in this case though.

 

wim

[Sally Robertson]

17 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

I had always imagined that the Boolean operators should be upper case but never looked into it. This September 2023 blog post by Sophie Basilevitch is entitled "How to think like a Picture Researcher and find the content you’re looking for on Alamy" and shows them used in lower case though, whilst paradoxically linking to an article that shows them in upper case.

 

Thanks Harry, it's interesting to see in the article the brackets around the search words where there is something known by more than one name, such as Myanmar or Burma. I tested it and found there are significantly more results when using the brackets. With the New York buildings and architecture example I can see how there are ways to hone search results.

 

15 hours ago, wiskerke said:

To see what people are probably looking for, try Found not guilty in Google images.

Hopefully clients who come up empty handed on Alamy, will go to Google and then come back with a link. Not in this case I'm afraid. Only one Alamy image on the whole very long page.

The way to search for such a thing here (and in general) is to put quotation marks around the phrase: 2,134 results for "Found not guilty" Not at all bad. I like the Google results a bit better in this case though.

 

wim

 

Thanks Wim re: the quotation marks. I can see that yields fewer and much more relevant results for "Found not guilty". I can see there is a bit of an art in itself to researching images from a researcher/buyer's perspective and it's good to understand these things when thinking about keywording ourselves.

[Harry Harrison]

7 hours ago, Sally Robertson said:

Thanks Harry, it's interesting to see in the article the brackets around the search words where there is something known by more than one name, such as Myanmar or Burma.

Yes, I noticed the brackets, it would be good to have a page dedicated to helping us with the techniques that picture researchers use though I expect that it must vary according to which library they are searching. A certain major competitor has their own dedicated Image Search Guide which is very comprehensive, all Boolean operators are Caps on there.

Edited January 30 by Harry Harrison

[Sally Robertson]

On 30/01/2024 at 18:30, Harry Harrison said:

Yes, I noticed the brackets, it would be good to have a page dedicated to helping us with the techniques that picture researchers use though I expect that it must vary according to which library they are searching. A certain major competitor has their own dedicated Image Search Guide which is very comprehensive, all Boolean operators are Caps on there.

 

Yes I think that would be helpful Harry. I guess it helps to always think like a picture researcher ourselves.

[Avpics]

A remembrance campaign for the centenary of the end of the Great War was titled 'There but not there' https://rbli.co.uk/news_articles/there-but-not-there-leaves-lasting-legacy/

 

Having attended a few such events I have images tagged with that title, but using it as a search results in zero images due to the operators cancelling it out. Entering as a quotation returns nearly five million unrelated images. Awkward.

Edited February 2 by Avpics