Bill Brooks Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 I haven't been using " " because - as a good foot soldier - I followed Alamy's advice, and now I'm screwed. Now, I can re-keyword 43,000 images. Cheers, Philippe Then Alamy advised Alamy photographers differently, than they did you. Years ago, I re keyworded using “ “ and [ ], based on Alamy’s advice to all photographers. I did it reluctantly, because it was a lot of work. I keyword in Bridge also, but work further on the keywords once they appear in Alamy manage images. It has also been a lot of ongoing work to cut paste keywords and insert “ “ [ ] in manage images over the ensuing years. From what I can see if your metadata conforms to past Alamy standards, it should be transferred over to the new system reasonably smoothly. You must have missed the “ “ instructions from Alamy, or it was before your time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJ Myford Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 I haven't been using " " because - as a good foot soldier - I followed Alamy's advice, and now I'm screwed. Now, I can re-keyword 43,000 images. Cheers, Philippe Then Alamy advised Alamy photographers differently, than they did you. Years ago, I re keyworded using “ “ and [ ], based on Alamy’s advice to all photographers. I did it reluctantly, because it was a lot of work. I keyword in Bridge also, but work further on the keywords once they appear in Alamy manage images. It has also been a lot of ongoing work to cut paste keywords and insert “ “ [ ] in manage images over the ensuing years. From what I can see if your metadata conforms to past Alamy standards, it should be transferred over to the new system reasonably smoothly. You must have missed the “ “ instructions from Alamy, or it was before your time. You must have missed the subsequent comments by Alamy that they would not be implementing " " or [ ], which is why contributors have been removing them from their keywords rather than adding them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Brooks Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 To try sum up common traits of photographers with problems with image placement position. Some have not been using “ “. Some are using the identical single keyword, or identical keyword phrase, in more than one of the 3 significance fields. Some do not have enough time to completely tweak their keywords once the keywords get into the comprehensive field in manage images. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJ Myford Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 To try sum up common traits of photographers with problems with image placement position. Some have not been using “ “. Some are using the identical single keyword, or identical keyword phrase, in more than one of the 3 significance fields. Some do not have enough time to completely tweak their keywords once the keywords get into the comprehensive field in manage images. As I told you above, Alamy said they would not be implementing " " or [ ], so contributors have been removing them, not adding them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allan Bell Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 To try sum up common traits of photographers with problems with image placement position. Some have not been using “ “. Some are using the identical single keyword, or identical keyword phrase, in more than one of the 3 significance fields. Some do not have enough time to completely tweak their keywords once the keywords get into the comprehensive field in manage images. Once more: If you look for Waterloo Belgium, the very first image is mine. It has Waterloo Belgium in the caption, essential, main and comprehensive keywords. Which word(s) don't you understand in very first image Seems you only read what fits you. But I'm sure you have an explanation for the above Cheers, Philippe Philippe I have a headache, would you please stop shouting? Allan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Brooks Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 I do exactly the same. Having to keyword the work of 17 photographers, I really don't have the time to fiddle with keywords. And nor do other (much, much bigger) libraries, I presume. If you look for Waterloo Belgium, the very first image is mine. It has Waterloo Belgium in the caption, essential, main and comprehensive keywords. If you look for mole molehill, my first image is n°398 of 500. It has mole molehill in the caption, essential, main and comprehensive keywords. Cheers, Philippe That’s not all you said.What about mole molehill? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 I haven't been using " " because - as a good foot soldier - I followed Alamy's advice, and now I'm screwed. Now, I can re-keyword 43,000 images. Cheers, Philippe Then Alamy advised Alamy photographers differently, than they did you. Years ago, I re keyworded using “ “ and [ ], based on Alamy’s advice to all photographers. I did it reluctantly, because it was a lot of work. I keyword in Bridge also, but work further on the keywords once they appear in Alamy manage images. It has also been a lot of ongoing work to cut paste keywords and insert “ “ [ ] in manage images over the ensuing years. From what I can see if your metadata conforms to past Alamy standards, it should be transferred over to the new system reasonably smoothly. You must have missed the “ “ instructions from Alamy, or it was before your time. I've been advised from the start to use ONLY spaces. Besides, you notice any mention of using " " in their manual? Why is Alamy so quiet about this matter? Cheers, Philippe That was my understanding as well. Please clarify, Alamy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Brooks Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Don’t have an explanation. Thats why I ask questions or try to sum up. Thats why group input is so important. If everyone puts their thinking caps on, maybe the entire group can come up with an explanation. Below is excellent information, direct from Alamy, posted by George Munday into another topic, that answers a lot of our questions. Note the Alamy comments on “ “. Must be someone other than me using “ “ ——————————————— We used to strip out commas you embedded in your metadata, now we will be using commas on the new system we have stopped doing this. At the moment separating keywords with a space is still fine and will be recognised as a separator with the new system, but if you would rather leave the keywords as they are with commas and no spaces that is also fine and will be recognised by the system. If you want to add multi-word tags (phrases) it makes sense to use commas to separate each tag. EG: America, USA, New York City, United states, times square, buildings, people This way the new system will recognise "New York City", "United States", and "Times Square" as single tags. Using " " marks around words or [ ] will also transfer to the new system as a single tag. We would not suggest waiting for the new tools, you should continue to keyword and get your images on sale as you have always done and once the new tools go live all your information will transfer across. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Thanks, Bill. I had yet to see that explanation posted in the other thread. I see a lot of quotation-marks removal (from old images) in my future... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jill Morgan Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Don’t have an explanation. Thats why I ask questions or try to sum up. Thats why group input is so important. If everyone puts their thinking caps on, maybe the entire group can come up with an explanation. Below is excellent information, direct from Alamy, posted by George Munday into another topic, that answers a lot of our questions. Note the Alamy comments on “ “. Must be someone other than me using “ “ ——————————————— We used to strip out commas you embedded in your metadata, now we will be using commas on the new system we have stopped doing this. At the moment separating keywords with a space is still fine and will be recognised as a separator with the new system, but if you would rather leave the keywords as they are with commas and no spaces that is also fine and will be recognised by the system. If you want to add multi-word tags (phrases) it makes sense to use commas to separate each tag. EG: America, USA, New York City, United states, times square, buildings, people This way the new system will recognise "New York City", "United States", and "Times Square" as single tags. Using " " marks around words or [ ] will also transfer to the new system as a single tag. We would not suggest waiting for the new tools, you should continue to keyword and get your images on sale as you have always done and once the new tools go live all your information will transfer across. Why do they tell that to one guy in a private mail and not to all of us in this forum and/or in their blog? Seems like whatever you do ..... it's ALL FINE. Really? Cheers, Philippe This wasn't in a private email to Bill, they posted that in another thread awhile ago. If you can Bill, can you post the link? Jill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jill Morgan Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Don’t have an explanation. Thats why I ask questions or try to sum up. Thats why group input is so important. If everyone puts their thinking caps on, maybe the entire group can come up with an explanation. Below is excellent information, direct from Alamy, posted by George Munday into another topic, that answers a lot of our questions. Note the Alamy comments on “ “. Must be someone other than me using “ “ ——————————————— We used to strip out commas you embedded in your metadata, now we will be using commas on the new system we have stopped doing this. At the moment separating keywords with a space is still fine and will be recognised as a separator with the new system, but if you would rather leave the keywords as they are with commas and no spaces that is also fine and will be recognised by the system. If you want to add multi-word tags (phrases) it makes sense to use commas to separate each tag. EG: America, USA, New York City, United states, times square, buildings, people This way the new system will recognise "New York City", "United States", and "Times Square" as single tags. Using " " marks around words or [ ] will also transfer to the new system as a single tag. We would not suggest waiting for the new tools, you should continue to keyword and get your images on sale as you have always done and once the new tools go live all your information will transfer across. Why do they tell that to one guy in a private mail and not to all of us in this forum and/or in their blog? Seems like whatever you do ..... it's ALL FINE. Really? Cheers, Philippe This wasn't in a private email to Bill, they posted that in another thread awhile ago. If you can Bill, can you post the link? Jill Not to Bill, but a private mail to George Munday: George: "........ I wrote to Alamy contributor relations and this is their very prompt reply. It answereds my questions succinctly and I figured might help others......" We used to strip out commas you embedded in your metadata, now we will be using commas on the new system we have stopped doing this. At the moment separating keywords with a space is still fine and will be recognised as a separator with the new system, but if you would rather leave the keywords as they are with commas and no spaces that is also fine and will be recognised by the system. If you want to add multi-word tags (phrases) it makes sense to use commas to separate each tag. EG: America, USA, New York City, United states, times square, buildings, people This way the new system will recognise "New York City", "United States", and "Times Square" as single tags. Using " " marks around words or [ ] will also transfer to the new system as a single tag. We would not suggest waiting for the new tools, you should continue to keyword and get your images on sale as you have always done and once the new tools go live all your information will transfer across. Cheers, Philippe Thanks for clearing that Phillippe. I remembered reading it in a thread, didn't remember it was from a private email. Yes, it would have been nice if they had posted on the forum, or sent a blanket email to all contributors. Jill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Brooks Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Thanks, Bill. I had yet to see that explanation posted in the other thread. I see a lot of quotation-marks removal (from old images) in my future... Do not remove the quotation marks from your old images, as the Alamy email to George Munday says they will transition just fine. Where did you get the idea to use quotation marks in your old images? Was it instructions from Alamy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJ Myford Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 There were instructions from Alamy to use " " many years ago, then some years later they said they would not be implemented in the search engine. The information one contributor has been given today (and now shared on this forum, so why couldn't Alamy do that themselves?) comes too late for those who have removed quotes years ago based on previous advice from Alamy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 My recollection is that they weren't implemented but that leaving them in did no harm. So I did, and continued to put them in to create phrases where needed to avoid false positives, which of course didn't work but now does. I win. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJ Myford Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 I removed some, left some, and recently replaced some with commas. Covering all bases. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Thanks, Bill. I had yet to see that explanation posted in the other thread. I see a lot of quotation-marks removal (from old images) in my future... Do not remove the quotation marks from your old images, as the Alamy email to George Munday says they will transition just fine. Where did you get the idea to use quotation marks in your old images? Was it instructions from Alamy? Yes, at the time, quotation marks and square brackets were de rigeur. I've stopped using both now. I have many phrases in quotation marks and [ ] in older images that I don't necessarily want to become "super tags," which I assume is what will happen -- at least to those phrases in essential keywords -- when the new system kicks in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Brooks Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Thanks, Bill. I had yet to see that explanation posted in the other thread. I see a lot of quotation-marks removal (from old images) in my future... Do not remove the quotation marks from your old images, as the Alamy email to George Munday says they will transition just fine. Where did you get the idea to use quotation marks in your old images? Was it instructions from Alamy? Yes, at the time, quotation marks and square brackets were de rigeur. I've stopped using both now. I have many phrases in quotation marks and [ ] in older images that I don't necessarily want to become "super tags," which I assume is what will happen -- at least to those phrases in essential keywords -- when the new system kicks in. A supertab is a tab with a high search significance, and can either be one word or a phrase. I think that the phrases enclosed in quotes in the old system, will become one supertab automatically, but only if they were already in the essentials box under the old system. If they were not in the essentials box, in the old system, then you will be able to designate them as supertabs as long as you are not already over your limit in supertabs. If they were already in the essentials box, I would not want to change them to regular tabs. For instance I could have supertabs of (fall colour),(fall color),(autumn color),(autumn colour), autumn. I could not squeeze all of this into the old essentials box. Under the old system I always worried that using fall as a keyword on its own would cause the image to end up in a search for the act of falling. Colour on its own, might come up in searches for supersaturate images. This would annoy the client, and lower my CTR. This is why the new system should be better for both photographers and clients. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Betty LaRue Posted January 9, 2017 Author Share Posted January 9, 2017 I'm excited to see the future. I also have old images with brackets and quotes. And as someone said above, these uses were directed by Alamy. Until they weren't. Then I have a middling tier of images with spaces. Then I went to my present system of using commas, sometimes quotes. That's the work of the last couple of years. I expect I might have to do some tweaking after system implementation. Mainly making sure my supertags are the ones I prefer. On another note, I did a search of an old image to see where it came up. It didn't come up at all for "bacon and tomato sandwich". Yes, I know "and" is ignored. Looking up the image, I didn't have the phrase in the keywords at all!! If I was that sloppy with that image, I shudder to think how many more of them there are. <groan> Edit to add, I just did a search in quotes and my image is now #7 on page one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReeRay Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 ^ Betty, take the quotes out and you're still on page 1 but this time out of 4,775 images instead of a mere 95 with quotes. Clues there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pearl Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 I have not used quotes or commas, just spaces so as an experiment I have added commas and spaces to one image. Nothing else was changed. Before making this change it came up second for a particular search term (within my main pseudo) but now it is in position 13. Pearl Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allan Bell Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 I do exactly the same. Having to keyword the work of 17 photographers, I really don't have the time to fiddle with keywords. And nor do other (much, much bigger) libraries, I presume. If you look for Waterloo Belgium, the very first image is mine. It has Waterloo Belgium in the caption, essential, main and comprehensive keywords. If you look for mole molehill, my first image is n°398 of 500. It has mole molehill in the caption, essential, main and comprehensive keywords. Cheers, Philippe That’s not all you said.What about mole molehill? Well, glad you mention it. So, what's your explanation? With the same ranking, same workflow, why this difference????? Why is one image placed n°1 and another n°398? ............... .......... ....... ... Bill? ....Bill? Cheers, Philippe Occurs to me that what Philippe is saying in his post is that Alamy's search engine is using a random search algorithm as is used to produce random numbers. I did suggest this in an earlier post, not necessarily in this thread, and Philippe's findings seem to confirm my thoughts. Allan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Betty LaRue Posted January 10, 2017 Author Share Posted January 10, 2017 ^ Betty, take the quotes out and you're still on page 1 but this time out of 4,775 images instead of a mere 95 with quotes. Clues there. Thank you for that info, ReeRay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tarsierspectral Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 I'm excited to see the future. I also have old images with brackets and quotes. And as someone said above, these uses were directed by Alamy. Until they weren't. Then I have a middling tier of images with spaces. Then I went to my present system of using commas, sometimes quotes. That's the work of the last couple of years. I expect I might have to do some tweaking after system implementation. Mainly making sure my supertags are the ones I prefer. On another note, I did a search of an old image to see where it came up. It didn't come up at all for "bacon and tomato sandwich". Yes, I know "and" is ignored. Looking up the image, I didn't have the phrase in the keywords at all!! If I was that sloppy with that image, I shudder to think how many more of them there are. <groan> Edit to add, I just did a search in quotes and my image is now #7 on page one. Betty, your reply made me thinking, made me doing some further testing and I came to some surprising conclusions I might have to do a whole lot less re-keywording on my 43K images than I initially thought. You deserve a thousand kisses Cheers, Philippe Philippe What conclusion did you come up with? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wiskerke Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 I'm not honestly sure where is best to post this, as there are a few threads that discuss the same subject of the new search engine, keywording using phrases, etc.. This is probably the most recent though so I hope it's ok to post here. I wrote to Alamy today to ask the specific question regarding phrases and how they'll convert into multi-word tags. I think it was in this thread where someone else quoted a private reply, but I've been told conflicting things elsewhere so I wanted to get it straight from the horse's mouth. This is their extremely helpful response, which without looking back may be the same as was previously quoted, but this backs it up anyway..... ----------------- If you want to add multi-word tags (phrases) it makes sense to use commas to separate each tag. EG: America, USA, New York City, United states, times square, buildings, people This way the new system will recognise “New York City”, “United States”, and “Times Square” as single tags. Using “ “ marks around words or [ ] will also transfer to the new system as a single tag. At the moment this won’t affect how your keywords are viewed in the current system as phrasal keywords are not possible, however once transferred over to the multi-word tags will work. ------------------ So this confirms that using commas in current keywords will convert properly and also confirms what I've seen myself that phrases do not work in the current system, and it's reassuring to be told they WILL work in the new system. Sorry if this is old news to some who saw the quote from someone's private message that I missed in a different thread. I also asked what to do when writing captions that include words we only want in a phrase. The example I asked about was one I've given in another thread not long ago, which is for my image of someone riding a rented bike from "Brighton Beach Bikes". I explained that even if using that as a phrase/multi-word tag (that should work in the new system), words from the caption field often seem to be given priority over those in the essentials/main fields, so my caption stating, "Cyclist riding along the promenade on a bicycle rented from Brighton Beach Bikes" may cause that image to still appear high up in search results when someone searches for "Brighton beach". This is a further email response to that particular question as well as clarifying the other point about how to create phrases.... ---------------- Just to clarify, if you keyword: cyclist, Brighton Beach Bikes, cycling along promenade, riding bicycle This will convert to the following tags: Tag 1: cyclist Tag 2: Brighton Beach Bikes Tag 3: cycling along promenade Tag 4: riding bicycle Also we have flagged your other question to our technical support team as an interesting example and they will look into this. However at the moment the only thing they can recommend is to not worry about it and to keep keywording your images as normal. ---------------- I wish I'd asked Alamy directly before as this is all very helpful, and I hope this post helps clarify things for others. It's also great that they've taken on board my query of using those same words in the caption. Geoff. Geoff, Thank you for asking and posting! Alamy thanks for the explanation. Now I get the headaches and sleepless nights. ;-) wim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedSnapper Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 ""Cyclist riding along the promenade on a bicycle rented from Brighton Beach Bikes" may cause that image to still appear high up in search results when someone searches for "Brighton beach"." and does it? I can't see it in a search for Brighton Beach.... and even if it did...is that actually a problem? The bikes are, presumably, part of the appeal of Brighton Beach.......i can't see any way that a search engine would , or should, be able to exclude those images. km Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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