Re-rank

[Duncan_Andison]

Slight drop from near the top to middle page 1. Checked other keywords searches and still there for key subjects. Down a little on popular subject matter but not to far thankfully.

[losdemas]

Yup.  If it made little sense before, it makes none at all now.

 

EDIT: I don't personally take it too seriously, otherwise I'd be seriously concerned! I have two psuedos: my major one which was a disaster last year is down 18 pages and close to the bottom (I can understand that), but the other psuedo (which is really only a holding location for those close to deletion, and has no sales and no zooms ever) is four pages above it!

 

LMAO :D

[Lisa]

Mine is the second image on the top of page 3. Woo hoo!

[Ed Rooney]

My BHZ image is still on Page One but has slipped from the top to near the bottom of the page. Hmm. I have no plans to attempt suicide. 

 

I read somewhere recently that is you want to improve your images and your sales . . . stand in front of more interesting subjects.  

[wiskerke]

My number 1 pseudo was (BHZ 2 or 3) on the first row at page 1 for a search for Amsterdam.

My number 2 pseudo was at BHZ #17 or 18 and for Amsterdam the first image landed on page 8.

That was a difference of 8 pages/120

My number 2 pseudo has dropped to BHZ#31.

 

Now hold onto your seats:

 

My first image for my number 2 pseudo which only fell 14 images on page 1, and is still #31 there on page 1,

now landed on page 35 for Amsterdam !

So a drop of 14 images resulted in a drop of 27 pages.

 

So all those 4000 images in front of me, in particular those 3250 between yesterday's result and today's result have been doing better than me. The contributors with their pseudos at least.

 

My pseudo#2 sold 87 out of a collection of 1330 for the rolling year.

A search for Amsterdam brings up 84,293 images on 703 pages at 120 a page.

 

Views divided by sales for my number 1 pseudo: 302

and for my number 2 pseudo: 684.

 

wim

[dustydingo]

If I do the BHZ, I have dropped from page 5 to 9 and there are 3155.  Yet if I do a search for CN tower, the first one I noticed of mine was on page 5 and there are almost 5,000 images of the tower.  So how does that make any sense?

 

Jill

 

That neatly encapsulates the reason some here (including Alamy) see BHZ as an irrelevance, a distraction, not related to "real" search results.

 

dd

[Gabbro]

It makes absolutely no sense!

 

I have two pseudos. So I filtered the date from July 1, 2015 to today. My #1 pseudo (802 images) had 5,056 Views, 95 Zooms, 26 Sales in that period, with a whopping CTR of 1.88. Yet it dropped from page 5 to 6. My #2 pseudo (5858 images) had 23,880 Views, 164 Zooms, 38 Sales, CTR = 0.69. It went up from page 7 to page 2. 

 

It makes NO SENSE, unless $$$ amount is figured in...???

[Pearl]

It makes absolutely no sense!

 

I have two pseudos. So I filtered the date from July 1, 2015 to today. My #1 pseudo (802 images) had 5,056 Views, 95 Zooms, 26 Sales in that period, with a whopping CTR of 1.88. Yet it dropped from page 5 to 6. My #2 pseudo (5858 images) had 23,880 Views, 164 Zooms, 38 Sales, CTR = 0.69. It went up from page 7 to page 2. 

 

It makes NO SENSE, unless $$$ amount is figured in...???

 

$$$$ amount IS figured in.  Average sale price is a significant factor in AR.

 

Pearl

[wiskerke]

 

My number 1 pseudo was (BHZ 2 or 3) on the first row at page 1 for a search for Amsterdam.

My number 2 pseudo was at BHZ #17 or 18 and for Amsterdam the first image landed on page 8.

That was a difference of 8 pages/120

My number 2 pseudo has dropped to BHZ#31.

 

Now hold onto your seats:

 

My first image for my number 2 pseudo which only fell 14 images on page 1, and is still #31 there on page 1,

now landed on page 35 for Amsterdam !

So a drop of 14 images resulted in a drop of 27 pages.

 

So all those 4000 images in front of me, in particular those 3250 between yesterday's result and today's result have been doing better than me. The contributors with their pseudos at least.

 

My pseudo#2 sold 87 out of a collection of 1330 for the rolling year.

A search for Amsterdam brings up 84,293 images on 703 pages at 120 a page.

 

Views divided by sales for my number 1 pseudo: 302

and for my number 2 pseudo: 684.

 

wim

 

Contact MS!

I hope they realize they are messing with pros' incomes.

 

Cheers,

Philippe (Furious  )

 

 

Hold on Philippe, it will only hurt your sales if you have a lot of very generic subjects which result in very large results. Keep Calm and all that.

 

I'm just doing the math. Nothing unjust about it. I know: statistics and damn lies and all that, but this is just simple number crunching (at which I'm really bad actually).

In my case my early keywording is also the main suspect. I had already come to that conclusion many months ago.

Far too many views lately.

 

My CTR, although of little consequence when you have enough sales, at the moment looks like this:

 

photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMkVPeh715vWJhcEBlCcFhjioeqcjB14Nzv8OLioNkgexHeG4k0KdkZzln9OvbAlg?key=Mm1Zd3gxZGQ2aUlmUUJQZFR6UXFXZTBFWWlNaHFR

(why can't I show images on Google+ anymore?)

 

 

CTR is of course a very important number, because it lets you see if clients are interested in your subjects and if they like your images.

A low number may also mean you have too many wrong keywords.

Maybe the keywords are related, or I may think they are related, but clients may well think otherwise.

Nobody to blame here but myself.

(You know the Dutch can be blunt. Fortunately most can still be blunt to themselves also. So it should not surprise you what my favorite road tune is at the moment.)

 

wim

[Broad Norfolk]

My main pseudonym has gone up 17 pages to page 12 - my highest ever. Due to the amount of zooms/sales I would have been disappointed if it hadn't. As a matter of interest I clicked on the 'New' category and two of my three pseudonyms are both on page 7.

 

Jim.   

[Martin P Wilson]

I don't think CTR is very meaningful in image ranking, at least with the BHZ exercise, which Alamy tell us is of dubious value anyway. I have 4 pseudonyms all on the same page, within a couple of rows of each other, in a BHZ search with CTRs between 0 and 0.95. I have another pseudonym with CTR of 1.06 and modest but better sales than most that is 4 pages later.

 

So trying to game the system or second guess how Alamy ranks seems pointless. I may go back to putting all my images in one psedunym except for news.

 

I will have a look at how my real searches are affected if at all, problem is they don't span all my pseudonyms and I don't monitor them very closely. I work on the basis do they seem OK rather than worrying about specific position.

 

REAL WORLD UPDATE: I am still on page 1 of my main test "real" search but perhaps a few rows lower. Interestingly the same image that appears on page 21 of BHZ search is on page 2 of a real search with 1,650 results, and another page 21 BHZ image is on page 1 of search with 500 results. Even the companions (same set) to my page 25 BHZ image appear on page 3 of 73 (8,700 results) for  a real search.

 

So I won't be losing any sleep over my lowly BHZ result! In fact I will probably abandon BHZ completely as one more thing that is not worth worrying about.

[Betty LaRue]

I do not play BHZ. That said, I have run searches using common keywords a buyer might use, and all my pseudos are doing very well. First page mostly, often several on the first page. A few not found, so deeper. I didn't look past the first 3-4 pages.

I even searched some of my older images, they did well. Like "House Finch male" without quotes. Old images. I'm trying to figure out why. My sales have picked up, as has my zooms. Decent CTR but not astounding.

I'm wondering if my conversion to using commas and quotes has helped. Of course, many of my past images don't have commas, I have not gone back and put them in. But possibly my later stuff after beginning commas and quotes has pulled everything else up in that pseudo.

Betty

[Ed Rooney]

I don't take the BHZ too seriously, with only 3,155 images in total, except as an indication of direction in a re-rank. But I just did some searches on subjects I have more than a few images of, and the story there is grim. My placement has worsened considerably. 

[John Mitchell]

My main pseudo has dropped to page five from page one, which doesn't surprise me that much because my sales numbers took a major hit last year. My secondary pseudo used to be on page eight. Now it must be somewhere south of Tierra del Fuego.

 

Update: I just found my secondary pseudo hiding on page nine -- don't know how I managed to miss it -- so turns out that it dropped only one page. I'd say that these BHZ results are a pretty accurate reflection of how my two pseudos have been performing.

[Duncan_Andison]

I don't take the BHZ too seriously, with only 3,155 images in total, except as an indication of direction in a re-rank. But I just did some searches on subjects I have more than a few images of, and the story there is grim. My placement has worsened considerably. 

+1

 

I use it as a rough guide before heading out and carrying out some set keyword searches to see where my actual images are appearing within the library.

[wiskerke]

How to explain a sharp drop in ranking of ALL one's pseudos for a specific search (large US city**)

<snip>

Today's BHZ reranking, in fact an improvement, so ?Nov 26? real world rank drop

did NOT portend drop in BHZ rank!!!!

 

1: Single keyword or multiple keywords?

2: There has been a change, or most probably a repair in the algorithm last weekend. This seems to have mainly affected key phrases with city names.

3: The October and November re-rankings or shifts at one point looked like the ranking had become dynamic. It could have been massive "BHZ-playing" by contributors. Or by Alamy ;-).

 

wim

[stipe]

So happy to be back to page 1 after a while 

[AlbertSnapper]

I'm yo-yoing again. This time UP !

[Lynn Palmer]

I'm thrilled!

 

Before Christmas I split off several collections of images into three new pseudos and for the first time in 3 years my primary pseudo jumped from page 25/26 to page 13!! The new pseudos are still languishing at the back but I expect at least one of them to move up next time since it's getting a disproportionate share of my zooms. I might even start uploading again after a hiatus of a year.

[Duncan_Andison]

I'm thrilled!

 

Before Christmas I split off several collections of images into three new pseudos and for the first time in 3 years my primary pseudo jumped from page 25/26 to page 13!! The new pseudos are still languishing at the back but I expect at least one of them to move up next time since it's getting a disproportionate share of my zooms. I might even start uploading again after a hiatus of a year.

 

That sort of confirms that the BHZ is not reliable given new Pseudos are given a medium rank. To be at the back would suggest everyone else is greater than medium. I just use as a way to tell if there has been a change and then to check specific searches.

[Bryan]

I appear to have crept up to the bottom of page 2, at least I think the direction is upwards as I can't truly remember where I was last time, or yesterday for that matter.....

[Pearl]

I also contest this statement from MS "As we list images based on their customer activity, the images shown in the first page has more customer activity so they show up first."

I have changed my BHZ images from time to time (between re-ranks) to test this but it has made no difference to the position.

 

Pearl

[Duncan_Andison]

If you ask me, Alamy took a big stick and gave the "pudding" a few stirs. It doesn't make sense that photographers with large archives - like me and Jeff who have steady, regular sales - suddenly don't find their images back in "real" searches. While others seem very surprised to find their images in the first pages while they hardly had sales.

Strange way to reward those who do great efforts   

 

Cheers,

Philippe (NOT amused!)

 

Maybe some sort of "Age of Image" check is being applied when deciding on ranking?!? Maybe more of an "Image Rank" and not just a Pseud rank. A lot of variables to choose from to change the images appearing in front of the customers to keep it fresh. Who knows (alamy of course) but I guess we'll never know!

[IDP]

 

Regarding timing of re-ranks, there was one on 13th June last year and then, somewhat inexplicably, another one on 30th July. There was a brief thread on the forum that mentioned it but that was closed by Alamy (http://discussion.alamy.com/index.php?/topic/4375-bhz/page-1#entry73245). After every re-rank, I take screenshots of the first page of BHZ and the changes in July were fairly substantial. There hasn't been one since then.

 

Regarding MS's response to Philippe, that simply isn't the case in respect of the Relevant tab. Like Pearl, I've also done tests with different images and it doesn't change relative positioning. As far as I can gather, it would have an effect under the Creative tab for a real world search - if a sale had been made for that exact search term.

 

Regarding the age of the image playing some part, I've certainly found that to be so with one's own images and, to a slight extent, in overall searches. However, much more important, seems to be one's rank and, crucially, matching the exact search phrase.

 

Ian D

[Sultanpepa]

I also wondered if the fact that I had changed my BHZ image for a new one about a month or so back had anything to do with me moving to the first page from seventh. Image age could be playing a big part here?