Photo Placement In Search Que

[Gordon O McGinnis]

Greetings,

 

New Alamy member here. In the past few days I've got around 23 or so photos approved and they are now "for sale."

 

For kicks I decided to come into the Alamy site as a buyer and use one of my search words and see what my photos looked like in the search que. Currently 20 pages in and have yet to see one of my photos.

 

Now I believe that if I keep going eventually I will see my photos but this questions occurs.

 

Human nature being what it is will buyers actually hang around and search 20 + pages in?

Will my photos ever even be seen?

The photos that do appear on the first, second, third search pages; how did that placement happen?

 

Thanks for answers to these questions!

[Inchiquin]

It's all relative. You start off as a newcomer with a median rank so in theory your images should be in the middle of the pile. If you search for a subject that turns up 10 million hits then you're going to be quite a few pages down! But if it only turns up 100 hits then you'll be on the first page. Then there's keywording. If you keyword concisely and accurately your images will obviously be seen before those that have sloppy or inaccurate keywording. And of course an image can come high up in a search for one keyword but low down in another, depending on the relative number of other pics with that keyword.

 

Your rank increases as you get more images zoomed, and the rankings are re-assessed nominally every 100 days though it's often a bit longer than that. So to increase your rank you upload lots of good images that customers want to see, correctly keyworded, and with not too many similars since that will drive down your rank.

 

Oh, and you don't expect to get very far with 23 images so you need to keep uploading.

 

Alan

[Gordon O McGinnis]

OK. That was quick, painless and informative. Thanks very much for the responses guys. Marking this post as "Solved."  : )