Quotation marks in keywords useless?

[mathieubmorin 6]

Hello,

 

I noticed again this morning when checking Alamy measure, that some of my images popped up in someone's search with no reason. 

 

Example:

This image "E29J0Y" appeared with these keywords: "christmas in venice"

 

The image has only this keyword related to the word Venice: "little Venice" (with the quotation marks) only because it was taken in Colmar, France and this city is also called "little Venice".

 

Since I used specifically the quotation marks to leave out all general searches referring to Venice, what am I doing wrong and why this image would still appear in a search with only the word 'Venice'?

 

Are the quotation marks really used by Alamy search? Am I doing all this added work uselessly? And btw, this is not the first time I notice something like this.

 

Thanks for any help.

 

 

[TokyoM1ke 124]

Ha ha! I just asked the same in another thread and the answer was a resounding "No!"

 

Quotes are ignored by Alamy in your keywording.

[mathieubmorin 6]

Ha ha! I just asked the same in another thread and the answer was a resounding "No!"

 

Quotes are ignored by Alamy in your keywording.

 

Bummer! That is really disappointing, mostly since Alamy still tells  us on the website to use the " " and [ ] !

 

Anyway, I fell on this thread which was helpful to me and you might be interested too: http://discussion.alamy.com/index.php?/topic/2327-keywording-syntax-using-quotation-marks/

 

In my case, I guess I will keep using the quotes and brackets, but might think twice before putting words without any direct reference to the picture (without quotes anyway), if that makes sense.

 

Mathieu

[digi2ap 47]

I fell for adding quotes too for a while :-)  There are many occasions (like your example of little Venice) where having quotations would help refine the search for such images.  Alamy does say however that sequencing is relevant, so make sure that you have "little" and "Venice" together in sequence  and that should help. 

[TokyoM1ke 124]

Sequencing? Now that is interesting. Thanks, Anthony.

[mathieubmorin 6]

Yep, will try to keep that in mind as well.

[Johnnie5 350]

I searched for your photo using the terms" little venice france" with those three words in different order and your photo always showed up at the bottom of page six.  I added France to the search because I got too many results without it.  Word order is insignificant.

[mathieubmorin 6]

I searched for your photo using the terms" little venice france" with those three words in different order and your photo always showed up at the bottom of page six.  I added France to the search because I got too many results without it.  Word order is insignificant.

 

I think digi2ap meant the order of the words in my own keyword fields (rather than the sequence of words from the customer). So it would be important when I keyword my images, to keep "little" and "Venice" close together in say, my comprehensive keywords. This way, the search engine will rank my images higher for a customer search of "little Venice" than "Venice in Winter" for example. 

 

At least, that's how I understand it.

[Guest]

Very easy to check. If a search uses the string "winter in venice", they get a different set of results from winter in venice....

 

A distinct phrase from the searcher will bring out those with the matching phrase in their keywords.... quote marks in keywords however, do not preclude words within then from being extracted in a search.

Edited September 3, 2014 by Guest

[Stokie 576]

I searched for your photo using the terms" little venice france" with those three words in different order and your photo always showed up at the bottom of page six.  I added France to the search because I got too many results without it.  Word order is insignificant.

 

Word order when searching might be insignificant but word order, or proximity, as Alamy call it is definitely significant. So you are right to have 'little' next to 'Venice' to help eliminate any spurious (nice word!) searches.

 

John.

[digi2ap 47]

I did again use quotations today when key-wording an image of the Tall Ships Festival at Greenwich.  As the architectural backdrop to the photographs is the "Royal Naval Hospital" and "Queen's House", I felt it warranted adding these keywords within quotations. Let's hope I don't get too many views for a hospital in Alamy Measures!!

[dustydingo 830]

 As the architectural backdrop to the photographs is the "Royal Naval Hospital" and "Queen's House", I felt it warranted adding these keywords within quotations.

 

But to no effect currently. Mabye to some effect some time in the future, although we have been waiting for some time now . . . see above.

 

dd

Edited September 6, 2014 by dustydingo