Tags and keywords

[wiskerke]

6 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

This Alamy Blog post from 6/2/18 mentions them:

https://www.alamy.com/blog/use-search-filters-alamy

 

"Age – set the age range of the people who feature in the image. There are a several options available ranging from ‘baby’ to ‘senior’ and everything in-between."

 

Oddly Australia has been left out of the (limited) list of possible options for the Location filter.

 

"Search for images taken in any of these three locations: USA, UK and Europe."

 

As I said: Consistency.

But what about Africa; Antarctica; Asia; Latin America; North America?

I get it that the UK thinks of itself as a continent.

 

wim

[wiskerke]

19 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Interesting, have those Age filters always been there since the new AIM, or even before? I must say that I haven't paid any attention to them.

 

For reference they are - Baby, Toddler, Child, Teenager, Young Adult, Adult, Senior Adult.

 

A very quick search using the Young Adult filter found an image which was indeed of a young adult but he was described as a 'young man' in the caption, no mention of 'adult' anywhere. Same for a picture with 'young woman' in the caption.

 

But then we would not able to see any other field except caption; keywords; location; date and more information additional info (consistency!).

 

wim

[David Rosenthal]

On 25/03/2024 at 14:27, Brian Vickers said:

Is it possible to see our 'Rank' or just the QC rank....I cant find it anywhere?

Yes you can find it at the top right where your name appears.

 

You'll see your rank and how many points you need out of 100 to get you to the next rank

[M.Chapman]

13 minutes ago, David Rosenthal said:

Yes you can find it at the top right where your name appears.

 

You'll see your rank and how many points you need out of 100 to get you to the next rank

Where exactly is this? - I've never noticed it.

 

Edit - Oh I found it. That's the Forum ranking, not the contributor's Alamy Rank. I presume the Brian wanted to know about his Alamy rank.

 

Mark

Edited March 26 by M.Chapman

[Brian Vickers]

Yes it’s the Alamy rank that I would like to see….it would be good to know…and see the results of efforts to try to improve it. I’ve misled myself thinking ultimate discoverability is the goal and want to improve my standing

[M.Chapman]

There are several ways of gaining an insight into how you're doing. Look at the dashboard, Alamy measures section.

 

Check the average number of views you're getting per image in your portfolio per month.

My total views over almost 13 months are 44,504 from a portfolio of 5,900 images giving an average of about 0.58 views/image/month

Several things drive views.

• Images need to contain words/phrases in captions or tags that are being searched for by customers (i.e. how "in demand" are the subjects in your images)
• Amount of competition (if there are many images returned in a search, then there will be more pages of results that may not get looked at by customers who only look at the first page or pages of results)
• Your Alamy rank (if your rank is low your images will appear lower down in search results, and may not appear on the first few pages, so won't get seen)
• Avoid having too many duplicate images as they will be spaced out (dispersal algorithm) through the results, forcing some to appear on later pages where they may not get seen)

 Check your CTR% (Zooms/Views expressed as a percentage)

• Alamy CTR average is currently 0.59%
• My total zooms over almost 13 months are 271 giving me a CTR of 0.61% (not brilliant IMO - I may need to do some culling of images)
• CTR% is believed to be one of the factors used to calculate your Alamy Rank. Higher CTR% should improve Alamy rank which should improve placement of your images when the next Rerank is done.
• CTR% can be improved by the following;
• Only use relevant keywords so that if your images are viewed they are more likely to be zoomed. Irrelevant images returned in searches are unlikely to be zoomed, damaging your CTR%
• Try to include precise keywords e.g. latin names of plants and animals, exact place names, model names etc.
• Don't submit too many similars, just submit your best images. Poor images may get viewed but are unlikely to be zoomed
• Try to avoid submitting images where there is too much competition, unless your images are really good.
• Do submit images of obscure or unusual things

Try the BHZ game to gain insight into how your images are being placed (*NB. Alamy warn that image placement is more complicated than this simple test)

• Add BHZ as a supertag only to one of your RM images. Pick a recently submitted visually distinctive image so you'll easily spot the thumbnail.
• Wait 24-48 hours for the search database to update
• Now do a search for for BHZ (with Relevant, RM only filters)
• Note how many images are returned in total (I see 2,807)
• Manually scan through until you find your image (mine is currently at position 262)
• I'm pleased with my current placement

*There are other factors in real searches that may give better or worse image placement than the simple BHZ test can reveal. e.g. If an image has been sold or zoomed previously it may be promoted in the results and older images may be demoted in some searches.  

 

Sales

Over the same almost 13 month period I've had 123 sales for $2,035 gross, $814 net (includes infringement revenue). Looking at the Forum "How was your month" threads will give insight into how others are doing. 

 

Mark

Edited March 27 by M.Chapman

[Nick Hatton]

On 27/03/2024 at 11:46, M.Chapman said:

There are several ways of gaining an insight into how you're doing. Look at the dashboard, Alamy measures section.

 

Check the average number of views you're getting per image in your portfolio per month.

My total views over almost 13 months are 44,504 from a portfolio of 5,900 images giving an average of about 0.58 views/image/month

Several things drive views.

• Images need to contain words/phrases in captions or tags that are being searched for by customers (i.e. how "in demand" are the subjects in your images)
• Amount of competition (if there are many images returned in a search, then there will be more pages of results that may not get looked at by customers who only look at the first page or pages of results)
• Your Alamy rank (if your rank is low your images will appear lower down in search results, and may not appear on the first few pages, so won't get seen)
• Avoid having too many duplicate images as they will be spaced out (dispersal algorithm) through the results, forcing some to appear on later pages where they may not get seen)

 Check your CTR% (Zooms/Views expressed as a percentage)

• Alamy CTR average is currently 0.59%
• My total zooms over almost 13 months are 271 giving me a CTR of 0.61% (not brilliant IMO - I may need to do some culling of images)
• CTR% is believed to be one of the factors used to calculate your Alamy Rank. Higher CTR% should improve Alamy rank which should improve placement of your images when the next Rerank is done.
• CTR% can be improved by the following;
• Only use relevant keywords so that if your images are viewed they are more likely to be zoomed. Irrelevant images returned in searches are unlikely to be zoomed, damaging your CTR%
• Try to include precise keywords e.g. latin names of plants and animals, exact place names, model names etc.
• Don't submit too many similars, just submit your best images. Poor images may get viewed but are unlikely to be zoomed
• Try to avoid submitting images where there is too much competition, unless your images are really good.
• Do submit images of obscure or unusual things

Try the BHZ game to gain insight into how your images are being placed (*NB. Alamy warn that image placement is more complicated than this simple test)

• Add BHZ as a supertag only to one of your RM images. Pick a recently submitted visually distinctive image so you'll easily spot the thumbnail.
• Wait 24-48 hours for the search database to update
• Now do a search for for BHZ (with Relevant, RM only filters)
• Note how many images are returned in total (I see 2,807)
• Manually scan through until you find your image (mine is currently at position 262)
• I'm pleased with my current placement

*There are other factors in real searches that may give better or worse image placement than the simple BHZ test can reveal. e.g. If an image has been sold or zoomed previously it may be promoted in the results and older images may be demoted in some searches.  

 

Sales

Over the same almost 13 month period I've had 123 sales for $2,035 gross, $814 net (includes infringement revenue). Looking at the Forum "How was your month" threads will give insight into how others are doing. 

 

Mark

Regarding the advice about having too many similar images, i am never quite sure how to deal with this one, I  have approaching 1000 images of Pilgrims walking the Camino de Santiago on here,but apart from locations all captions and keywords are similar, could this be hurting my rank? By the way they are doing well for me in sales terms.

Edited March 28 by Nick Hatton
correction

[M.Chapman]

3 hours ago, Nick Hatton said:

Regarding the advice about having too many similar images, i am never quite sure how to deal with this one, I  have approaching 1000 images of Pilgrims walking the Camino de Santiago on here,but apart from locations all captions and keywords are similar, could this be hurting my rank? By the way they are doing well for me in sales terms.

What's your current CTR%? Have you tried the BHZ test? Looking at your Camino de Santiago images, they are all different and they contain people doing things (always good for sales). So, unless your CTR% and BHZ results are lousy, I'd probably leave them alone, especially if they generate sales. But I probably wouldn't have submitted 5 very similar portrait format images of a backpacker in front of Swallet waterfall for example. They are just too visually similar (same person, very similar pose, same framing). Pick the best landscape and portrait (and possibly square) format shots and submit only those.

 

Like your images BTW.

 

Mark

Edited March 28 by M.Chapman

[Brian Vickers]

I have 4,400 images...My CTR is only 0.28.....and 0.26 views/image/month.....I have 6 sales worth $86 this year so far......I have some work to do!

 

[Nick Hatton]

6 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

What's your current CTR%? Have you tried the BHZ test? Looking at your Camino de Santiago images, they are all different and they contain people doing things (always good for sales). So, unless your CTR% and BHZ results are lousy, I'd probably leave them alone, especially if they generate sales. But I probably wouldn't have submitted 5 very similar portrait format images of a backpacker in front of Swallet waterfall for example. They are just too visually similar (same person, very similar pose, same framing). Pick the best landscape and portrait (and possibly square) format shots and submit only those.

 

Like your images BTW.

 

Mark

Thanks Mark, I know you are spot on with your advice, it is the one thing I always struggle with deciding which images to use. My CTR is .69   

[Foreign Export]

On 22/03/2024 at 07:02, Brian Vickers said:

I visited the stand at the Photography Show - NEC Birmingham - I had a chat at the Alamy stand about the best strategy for tagging. I've been making sure of maximum visibility with 50 tags and 10 supertags etc.....but now I'm advised to stick with relevant tags and not to worry about making up 50.....I've been adding location village, town, county, region, country, continent etc to make up the word count.

 

Does anyone have an opinion or can corroborate this being a good approach?

Thanks

I certainly dont worry about reaching 50 keywords, I only keyword relevant words and phrases, I do always include location and country though, particularly as 80% of my images are outside the UK

Edited March 29 by Foreign Export