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Search engine seems to be working for me.


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I've made a sale of a recently uploaded image.

I've had a new cluster of zooms today.

I've made a sale of a recent zoom.

This is action since the advent of the new search algorithms.

 

Overall, my zooms are down, but my CTR is holding up. And I've made sales since then earlier in the month than usual for me.

 

Don't blame this on my port being in a low down position and being rotated up, because my images have been well-placed for the last year or two. Many on the first page.

The new search engine isn't hurting me. Yet. Just sayin'.

Betty

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The new search engine is working for me as well.

 
I expect the search engine will benefit photographers even more, as it continues to be tweaked. I can’t wait to use the new system to do some new keywording. Some of my keywording is 12 years old. It needs updating.
 
I expect it will punish photographers who have been gaming the system. Too many irrelevant keywords, too many similar images, multiple use of same keyword, wearing a tinfoil hat, all come to mind.
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The new search engine is working for me as well.

 
I expect the search engine will benefit photographers even more, as it continues to be tweaked. I can’t wait to use the new system to do some new keywording. Some of my keywording is 12 years old. It needs updating.
 
I expect it will punish photographers who have been gaming the system. Too many irrelevant keywords, too many similar images, multiple use of same keyword, wearing a tinfoil hat, all come to mind.

 

 

All the images I showed in other threads concerning severe keyword spamming and totally irrelevant keywords were found on the very first pages of search results. I often wonder if we're looking at the same agency  :rolleyes:

Anyway, km, Doc, Pearl and many others with large ports seem to share my concerns...... just not you. But then again "contrarious" seems to be your middlename.  :mellow:

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

 

+ 1 Well said Philippe

 

Pearl

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The new search engine is working for me as well.

 

I expect the search engine will benefit photographers even more, as it continues to be tweaked. I can’t wait to use the new system to do some new keywording. Some of my keywording is 12 years old. It needs updating.

 

I expect it will punish photographers who have been gaming the system. Too many irrelevant keywords, too many similar images, multiple use of same keyword, wearing a tinfoil hat, all come to mind.

Bill, I meant to give a greenie and on my iPad I inadvertently hit red!

 

Sorry.

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I think the clumping was a problem (and still is) but I don't think that was caused by ranking. I started, as everyone, at a middle rank and after my first couple of sales I FELL to almost the bottom because they were wee sales and it was the first time I had been judged by anything other than being a new contributor. I was able to come back from the bottom and, over time, I think my ranking more or less coincided with what I was achieving. Somehow there were always anomalies in which somebody's best pseudo fell and a poor one rose but at least I had the feeling that the care of my work and quality of my images mattered. I am hoping this change is going to be OK for me but the number of views I get now suggests I might as well be spending my time doing something else.

 

Paulette

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We as individual photographers have to remember that our goals and Alamy's goals are not the same.

 

Alamy is trying to work a search engine that will find the right image for the customer (although right now it seems to be plucking some strange ones) not just the best image from the biggest and most prolific contributors.

 

The photographer's goal is to have their images be ones that the customer sees the most often and therefore get purchased more often. 

 

I don't think they have the search engine perfected yet.

 

Way back in the 90's, when Yahoo was the big search engine on the web, Google came along and tossed them on their butt.  On Yahoo, search results were based on website owners paying for placement, so small businesses without extra funds couldn't afford to pay that kind of bill so people searching wouldn't necessarily see the best results, just the best results for those who paid for placement.  Google with its secret algorithms managed to get the best results on the first page.  They had paid placement, but usually there are only 4 and they are distinctly marked as ads.  The customer got better more relevant results.

 

This is what I think Alamy is trying to do, get the best results regardless of the photographer.  It's not working perfectly yet, but probably over time, especially when the tag limit will be 50, forcing photographers to stick to the most relevant keywords.  I plan to do the wait and see over the next few months and see what happens.  It truly will be more evident when the new keywording system goes into effect.

 

Jill

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"We as individual photographers have to remember that our goals and Alamy's goals are not the same.

 

Alamy is trying to work a search engine that will find the right image for the customer (although right now it seems to be plucking some strange ones) not just the best image from the biggest and most prolific contributors.

 

The photographer's goal is to have their images be ones that the customer sees the most often and therefore get purchased more often.

 

I don't think they have the search engine perfected yet.

 

Way back in the 90's, when Yahoo was the big search engine on the web, Google came along and tossed them on their butt. On Yahoo, search results were based on website owners paying for placement, so small businesses without extra funds couldn't afford to pay that kind of bill so people searching wouldn't necessarily see the best results, just the best results for those who paid for placement. Google with its secret algorithms managed to get the best results on the first page. They had paid placement, but usually there are only 4 and they are distinctly marked as ads. The customer got better more relevant results.

 

This is what I think Alamy is trying to do, get the best results regardless of the photographer. It's not working perfectly yet, but probably over time, especially when the tag limit will be 50, forcing photographers to stick to the most relevant keywords. I plan to do the wait and see over the next few months and see what happens. It truly will be more evident when the new keywording system goes into effect.

 

Jill"

 

Well said, Jill. I'm also in a holding pattern.

I do respect everyone's concerns, but I'll wait until I get hit with a chunk of blue before I decide the sky is falling.

Betty

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newbies with a handful of images - who started with a medium ranking (but is that still the case?????) - will need a LOT of luck to be seen. Will they have the patience to continue?

Under the old system there was negative ranking. Newbies got a median ranking. As soon as they made sales their collection became "significant" meaning they had a good chance of being under the median rank. This meant that those with no sales got a higher ranking than those who did... for whom the chance of further sales then collapsed.

:blink: Don't understand. Makes no sense to me.

 

A while ago I set up a new pseudonym for a chum who had decided to put his images through me instead of doing it himself. Initially he received a median ranking. In the first period we made some sales. In the next rerank his ranking collapsed. I took it up with member services and eventually got an answer from one of the higher echelons of Alamy. His answer was that pseudonyms with no sales have no data to measure and therefore are not "significant" and remain on a median rank. As soon as sales are made they thereafter become "significant" i.e. they have data which is measureable to put a ranking figure on. Median being average it was possible therefore to be assigned a below average ranking, below those of pseudonyms which sold nothing. With a small collection as many newbies have, there is a good chance that they would they would be assigned a low ranking, which leads to low ranking, which leads to low sales, which leads to low ranking. As you have mentioned before newbies who didn't hit the ground running with sizeable collections were always facing a uphill task.

 

BTW I am an exception when it comes to seeing a collapse under the old system and not all made the mistake I did by supplying sport.

 

That tends to confirm what I have long argued: once you lost the median ranking it was downhill all the way with no way back unless one could generate high image numbers (and sales) into a new (median) pseudonym between reranks! Whether that has changed with the new algorithms, who knows? We won't know for several months.

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Bill, all the images I showed in other threads concerning severe keyword spamming and totally irrelevant keywords were found on the very first pages of search results. I often wonder if you and me are looking at the same agency :rolleyes:

Anyway, km, Doc, Pearl and many others with large ports seem to share my concerns...... just not you. But then again "contrarious" seems to be your middlename. :mellow:

 

Cheers,

Philippe

Well said. Those with small ports like me but large sales volume FOR THE SIZE OF THE COLLECTION also agree. I also agree that any sales we get now are not related to the new search engine. It's views, zooms and resulting sales that matter. It isn't just about views because due to the random nature of results (phrases being ignored and images with searched words only in Main or Caption coming first) means that irrelevant images are often amongst the views. Therefore zooms and resulting sales will suffer.

 

Bill is always fighting against the majority opinion and I don't bother reading his posts any more. It's not worth the stress. :)

 

Geoff.

 

 

 

There are 50,000 individual photographers represented by Alamy.
 

 

I do not know if my opinions on the new search engine are contrarian, because I would never presume to know the opinions of 50,000 Alamy photographers.

 

 

 

 

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 Views on all three of my pseudonyms don't seem to have been negatively affected by the new search engine. If anything, they've risen somewhat. Zooms dropped over the holidays as expected, but they appear to be coming back. So I guess the new search engine is working for me so far. Perhaps I'll be eating these words in the months to come, though.

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Interesting.  My views are about half of what they were last year.  Zooms are down a bit, and no sales yet this year, but hey, it's just a week.

 

Surprisingly, three solid sales for me so far this year. Views creeping back up after the break.

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What Alamy must never forget is that without their photographers they no longer have a  business!

 

This isn't as valid as it used to be. In our crowd-sourced world there is no shortage of eager, would-be contributors. For every one who leaves, probably a dozen (?) new ones come along. That's life in 2017.

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I have spent the last week trying to figure out why it’s working for me.

 
Here are some things I have noticed. When I look at my December views, (Pseudonym Summary) I see a lot of multi word searches. I get fewer views and more zooms on multi word searches, resulting in higher CTR. I have always keyworded all relevant parts of the image, which is better for multi word searches. I have always keyworded location as a keyword, and also put location in the caption. I keyword concepts. I use keyword phrases. I only have 2 Pseudonyms and both have strong CTR. MY CTR went up 20 points in Oct, and stayed high in Nov, Dec 2016.
 
When keywording, I consider false positives in searches. 
 
I am coming to the conclusion that, to avoid false positives, it is important to use more keyword phrases. For an example consider (air pollution), (air), (pollution). Use only (air pollution) and (pollution) and not (air) because air alone would end up in all kinds of irrelevant searches and lower my CTR. I notice when I search on only one keyword the Alamy search engine pops up and suggests a search phrase. Here is London: 
 
london
london skyline
london eye
london underground
london bus
london bridge
london taxi
london zoo
london street
london aerial
 
Is that part of the new search engine, or has it been doing that all along?
 
Perhaps photographers who have seen negative results from the new search engine could give us some helpful data on how they have been keywording.
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