Search engine seems to be working for me.

[RedSnapper]

Just searched the first 20 pages @100 images and its not there

 

i wouldnt worry about it....

 

 

and picture researchers are very adept at scanning hundreds of images very quickly ......your pic isnt going to cause them any upset or concern

 

km

[christian58]

As I said. The search engine seems to be working fine. However the lack of sales here is almost uncanny, gone! spoke to some other members, friends here and two of them with huge portfolios and zip! nothing since beginning of December. Could it possibly be that the search buyers see is different from the search that we see?

There is another very large agency xxxx where these two searches are completely different so its possible.

 

This drought is weird and even more so considering the vast amount of sales at other agencies.

[Doc]

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.

 

Hi Geoff,

 

Thanks for posting this - very helpful - did you happen to glean/infer the answers to the following questions?

 

1. If your image were to just have the four tags you mention, will it show up at all in a search for Brighton Beach (ie will the search engine pick up on 2 of the 3 words in the tag, or is the tag "all or nothing"?)

 

and

 

2. Should those same words be put in inverted commas (or commas) in the Caption as well, to prevent them from being picked up by the search engine?

 

Thanks

 

Kumar

[Doc]

 

 

Hi Geoff,

 

Thanks for posting this - very helpful - did you happen to glean/infer the answers to the following questions?

 

1. If your image were to just have the four tags you mention, will it show up at all in a search for Brighton Beach (ie will the search engine pick up on 2 of the 3 words in the tag, or is the tag "all or nothing"?)

 

and

 

2. Should those same words be put in inverted commas (or commas) in the Caption as well, to prevent them from being picked up by the search engine?

 

Thanks

 

Kumar

 

 

You're very welcome Kumar.

 

There was no more of any relevance in the replies I received, that I didn't post here earlier. So I can only really make assumptions, which may not be correct!    As the reply said that phrases "will work" then my best guess is that they'll work as you'd.....or at least I would expect, which would mean it would be all or nothing.

 

As for question 2, my understanding from the replies is that they don't yet know the answer, or at least the lady replying didn't know, so she has asked the technical team and if they get back to me, I'll post it here.

 

Sorry I can't help any more.

 

Geoff.

 

Thanks Geoff!

 

Kumar

[christian58]

 

As I said. The search engine seems to be working fine. However the lack of sales here is almost uncanny, gone! spoke to some other members, friends here and two of them with huge portfolios and zip! nothing since beginning of December. Could it possibly be that the search buyers see is different from the search that we see?

There is another very large agency xxxx where these two searches are completely different so its possible.

 

This drought is weird and even more so considering the vast amount of sales at other agencies.

Doesn't make sense.

What do you call huge portfolios? I have 43K images and I still have on average between 3 and 10 sales per day. Besides, since it takes approximately three months for sales to clear, you should see the effect on sales since the introduction of the new search engine starting from March. Not now. The only visible effect now are views and zooms, but not sales.

Just my two cents.

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

Hi there! how goes?

 

Well you might be in luck then Philippe!  they have about the same size as your port, one of them even more!  then again the size of the port is quite irrelevant. Its the content that counts. Considering the new search I would have thought High-commercial-images involving model-releases and all would actually sell better.

 

Having said this if they still mix creative with editorial content? well then I can understand sales are scarse.

 

all the best!

[Betty LaRue]

 

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

I'll take them, Philippe.

[Bill Brooks]

Glad things are not as bad as some of you first thought, and that some of you are feeling better.

 

Lets move on, and embrace the new search engine.

[Betty LaRue]

What I get out of Geoff's post is that "" and [ ] might not work for phrases now, but a phrase separated by commas will work. I know this from my own usage.

And I don't quite believe that quotes don't work. For me, they seem to work like commas for phrases. I do know the image I mentioned earlier, "bacon and tomato sandwich" surrounded by quotes was #7 on the first page yesterday.

Who knows, with the search engine churning, where it is today.

Edited to add

The search in quotes returns #7. The search without quotes is 2/3 down the first page.

[Bill Brooks]

Just searched the first 20 pages @100 images and its not there

 

i wouldnt worry about it....

 

 

and picture researchers are very adept at scanning hundreds of images very quickly ......your pic isnt going to cause them any upset or concern

 

km

 

 

+1

 

As a former picture editor agree 100%, enroll in his course.

[Bill Brooks]

 

 

Glad things are not as bad as some of you first thought, and that some of you are feeling better.

 

Lets move on, and embrace the new search engine.

 

 

Things are still not that great Bill, and search results illogical. The answers I've been given are just about ensuring we know how to keyword correctly now, in a way that will translate into multi-word tags. There are still many questions to be answered, but at least if phrases are going to work once we all have the new tools, it'll give us back some of the control we recently lost with regards which images appear first for which searches.

 

It's hard to embrace something we do not understand, but I've always said that the new tools should be a good thing. I just wish they'd introduced them without also changing the search engine. However, as we cannot do anything about that, I try to see the positive as much as possible. My views are doing ok now despite a drop (as you'd expect anyway) over the Christmas and New Year period. The "wrong" images are often in those views, but once we have the new tools we'll be able to do something about that.

 

Geoff.

 

 

It may be difficult to embrace the new search engine, but it seems that you are.

[Jill Morgan]

Since we now do have the advance notice of how to keyword from now on, it could be to our benefit to rekeyword older images so that not only do they get the proper supertags, but we can combine that with the fact that Alamy did mention it wouldn't remove any keywords already in images already on the site.

 

Jill

[Bill Brooks]

Since we now do have the advance notice of how to keyword from now on, it could be to our benefit to rekeyword older images so that not only do they get the proper supertags, but we can combine that with the fact that Alamy did mention it wouldn't remove any keywords already in images already on the site.

 

Jill

 

 

 

 

You may be getting ahead of yourself.

 

Keyword new submissions taking supertags and keyword phrases into account.

 

Wait until the supertags, and keyword phrase tags are implemented, before working on older images.

 

I would also like to know more about how new search treats the caption.

 

The beta testing going on now could change things, giving the keyworder either fewer or more options.

 

Perhaps Alamy will provide a keywording instruction manual once things are firmed up.

 

We also do not know if the new keywording protocol will be rolled out in 6 days or 6 months.

[Doc]

 

Since we now do have the advance notice of how to keyword from now on, it could be to our benefit to rekeyword older images so that not only do they get the proper supertags, but we can combine that with the fact that Alamy did mention it wouldn't remove any keywords already in images already on the site.

 

Jill

 

 

 

 

You may be getting ahead of yourself.

 

Keyword new submissions taking supertags and keyword phrases into account.

 

Wait until the supertags, and keyword phrase tags are implemented, before working on older images.

 

I would also like to know more about how new search treats the caption.

 

The beta testing going on now could change things, giving the keyworder either fewer or more options.

 

Perhaps Alamy will provide a keywording instruction manual once things are firmed up.

 

We also do not know if the new keywording protocol will be rolled out in 6 days or 6 months.

 

+1

[Jill Morgan]

 

Since we now do have the advance notice of how to keyword from now on, it could be to our benefit to rekeyword older images so that not only do they get the proper supertags, but we can combine that with the fact that Alamy did mention it wouldn't remove any keywords already in images already on the site.

 

Jill

 

 

 

 

You may be getting ahead of yourself.

 

Keyword new submissions taking supertags and keyword phrases into account.

 

Wait until the supertags, and keyword phrase tags are implemented, before working on older images.

 

I would also like to know more about how new search treats the caption.

 

The beta testing going on now could change things, giving the keyworder either fewer or more options.

 

Perhaps Alamy will provide a keywording instruction manual once things are firmed up.

 

We also do not know if the new keywording protocol will be rolled out in 6 days or 6 months.

 

 

 

My fear is that if we go into the images after the new protocol, when we change keywords, it will limit us to the 50.  That if will only keep them all if they are left untouched.

 

Maybe Alamy could clarify that point.

 

Jill

[Pearl]

 

 

Since we now do have the advance notice of how to keyword from now on, it could be to our benefit to rekeyword older images so that not only do they get the proper supertags, but we can combine that with the fact that Alamy did mention it wouldn't remove any keywords already in images already on the site.

 

Jill

 

 

 

 

You may be getting ahead of yourself.

 

Keyword new submissions taking supertags and keyword phrases into account.

 

Wait until the supertags, and keyword phrase tags are implemented, before working on older images.

 

I would also like to know more about how new search treats the caption.

 

The beta testing going on now could change things, giving the keyworder either fewer or more options.

 

Perhaps Alamy will provide a keywording instruction manual once things are firmed up.

 

We also do not know if the new keywording protocol will be rolled out in 6 days or 6 months.

 

 

 

My fear is that if we go into the images after the new protocol, when we change keywords, it will limit us to the 50.  That if will only keep them all if they are left untouched.

 

Maybe Alamy could clarify that point.

 

Jill

 

 

+1

 I am fairly sure that will be the situation.

 

Pearl

[Betty LaRue]

 

What I get out of Geoff's post is that "" and [ ] might not work for phrases now, but a phrase separated by commas will work. I know this from my own usage.

And I don't quite believe that quotes don't work. For me, they seem to work like commas for phrases. I do know the image I mentioned earlier, "bacon and tomato sandwich" surrounded by quotes was #7 on the first page yesterday.

Who knows, with the search engine churning, where it is today.

 

I specifically asked about commas Betty, so there's nothing to say (at least in what Alamy told me) that quotes and brackets won't translate just as well. The post someone else made of a private message from Alamy suggested that quotes and square brackets would also work, if I remember that correctly.

 

I have never seen evidence that quotes have worked, and it may just be the fact you had those words next to each other that helped your images appear higher in results.

 

Geoff.

The thing is, Geoff, when I searched with quotes around "bacon and tomato sandwich", it was treated as a phrase. And placement #7. When I searched the same phrase without quotes, it moved 2/3 down the first page. So having the words next to each other wasn't as important as having the quotes.

[RedSnapper]

"bacon and tomato sandwich" - with quotes , 95 results

 

bacon and tomato sandwich - without quotes , 4776 results

 

Searching with quotes only returns those images where the exact word order is matched. (which is standard search engine / database behaviour)

Searching without quotes returns any images with all of the words, but, (probably) returns those with a close match in word order / word proximity higher in the results

 

This is not the same as using quotes in keywords themselves to keep words in meaningful phrases...

 

km

[Bill Brooks]

 

 

 

My fear is that if we go into the images after the new protocol, when we change keywords, it will limit us to the 50.  That if will only keep them all if they are left untouched.

 

Maybe Alamy could clarify that point.

 

Jill

 

 

 

Fear not Jill. I think you will not need over 50 supertags/tags when you rekeyword. 

 

I random checked your keywording, and I got counts like 29 keywords, 222 characters for heavy keywording. Sometimes a lot less. I think the new Alamy generated tags would accommodate all of your old keywords, and leave extra tags for your rekeywording needs after the new Alamy protocol is live.

 

Tags are made up of many characters. For instance the tag “Rouge National Urban Park” is only one supertag but 25 characters counting the 3 spaces. That is already 1/2 the old essential keyword box limit of 50 characters. “Tree” is 4 characters but one tag.

 

If we have a total of 50 supertags/tags at an average usage of 10 characters per supertag/tag. Then that is 500 characters. The old character limit was 1206 characters. I checked some of my old keywording. Even the heavy keywording per image ran under 400 characters. Things like 38 words, 343 characters. Most were more often like 28 words, 237 characters.

 

I cant conceive of any photographer ever using the old keyword limit of 1206 characters, or the new supertag/tag limit of 50. We do not yet know the limit to the number of characters in an individual supertag/tag, but it should be generous.

 

Free character counter widget for mac or Windows here:

 

http://www.supermagnus.com/mac/wordcounterwidget/index.html

 

The important thing for me is that, in the old system, I was limited to 50 characters in the high essential keyword box. Now I should be able to get essential keywords containing much more than a total of the old 50 character limit using supertags. The old keywords that were formally in the middle box, will be designated by Alamy as tags. If appropriate, I expect to convert some of those tags to supertags. This is another reason to wait before working on old legacy images.

 

Another advantage is that a generous use of supertag/tags, that contain keyword phrases, can prevent false positives in the client search that would lower my CTR.

 

In the meantime I am working on understanding standard internet search protocol, and image keywording philosophy.

 

Interesting article here:

 

http://danheller.blogspot.ca/2007/04/keywording-and-future-of-stock.html

 

This site is very useful for keyworders.

 

http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/whatsnew.html

 

Things are still foggy. If Keith is still reading this thread maybe he can help us out.

[wiskerke]

 

 

 

 

My fear is that if we go into the images after the new protocol, when we change keywords, it will limit us to the 50.  That if will only keep them all if they are left untouched.

 

Maybe Alamy could clarify that point.

 

Jill

 

 

 

Fear not Jill. I think you will not need over 50 supertags/tags when you rekeyword. 

 

I random checked your keywording, and I got counts like 29 keywords, 222 characters for heavy keywording. Sometimes a lot less. I think the new Alamy generated tags would accommodate all of your old keywords, and leave extra tags for your rekeywording needs after the new Alamy protocol is live.

 

Tags are made up of many characters. For instance the tag “Rouge National Urban Park” is only one supertag but 25 characters counting the 3 spaces. That is already 1/2 the old essential keyword box limit of 50 characters. “Tree” is 4 characters but one tag.

 

If we have a total of 50 supertags/tags at an average usage of 10 characters per supertag/tag. Then that is 500 characters. The old character limit was 1206 characters. I checked some of my old keywording. Even the heavy keywording per image ran under 400 characters. Things like 38 words, 343 characters. Most were more often like 28 words, 237 characters.

 

I cant conceive of any photographer ever using the old keyword limit of 1206 characters, or the new supertag/tag limit of 50. We do not yet know the limit to the number of characters in an individual supertag/tag, but it should be generous.

 

Free character counter widget for mac or Windows here:

 

http://www.supermagnus.com/mac/wordcounterwidget/index.html

 

The important thing for me is that, in the old system, I was limited to 50 characters in the high essential keyword box. Now I should be able to get essential keywords containing much more than a total of the old 50 character limit using supertags. The old keywords that were formally in the middle box, will be designated by Alamy as tags. If appropriate, I expect to convert some of those tags to supertags. This is another reason to wait before working on old legacy images.

 

Another advantage is that a generous use of supertag/tags, that contain keyword phrases, can prevent false positives in the client search that would lower my CTR.

 

In the meantime I am working on understanding standard internet search protocol, and image keywording philosophy.

 

Interesting article here:

 

http://danheller.blogspot.ca/2007/04/keywording-and-future-of-stock.html

 

This site is very useful for keyworders.

 

http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/whatsnew.html

 

Things are still foggy. If Keith is still reading this thread maybe he can help us out.

 

 

Maybe you're right. I hope so.

Unless Alamy is right:

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.

 

Meaning that a tag will be like something between quotation marks. Which will only be found if the client uses that exact phrase.

See where my sleepless nights are coming from.

And that everyone from now on can copy/paste my exact keywords is not helping either.

 

wim

[Bill Brooks]

 

 

Maybe you're right. I hope so.

Unless Alamy is right:

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.

 

Meaning that a tag will be like something between quotation marks. Which will only be found if the client uses that exact phrase.

See where my sleepless nights are coming from.

And that everyone from now on can copy/paste my exact keywords is not helping either.

 

wim

 

 

 

I hope so, because it will prevent false positives in the search that could lower your CTR. The client will have a better search experience if they use standard internet search protocol.

 

For instance:

 

Rouge National Urban Park is a urban wilderness park, that looks like a wilderness, inside the city of Toronto.

 

“Rouge National Urban Park” (correct name) “Rouge Park” (common usage) “Rouge National Park” (common usage) “National Park” “Toronto Park” “park Toronto” “National Park Toronto” would catch all of the various specific possible keyword phrase searches without lowering your CTR by including it in one word searches for rouge(cosmetics), park (too general), national(too general), Toronto(the park is a wilderness not a city), urban, (too general and the park is a wilderness)

 

If the tags and supertags appear below your sales page image perhaps Alamy could structure them to only search, and prevent them from being copy/paste. Start to select a tag in order to copy, and it sends the offender off on a search.

[Betty LaRue]

"bacon and tomato sandwich" - with quotes , 95 results

 

bacon and tomato sandwich - without quotes , 4776 results

 

Searching with quotes only returns those images where the exact word order is matched. (which is standard search engine / database behaviour)

Searching without quotes returns any images with all of the words, but, (probably) returns those with a close match in word order / word proximity higher in the results

 

This is not the same as using quotes in keywords themselves to keep words in meaningful phrases...

 

km

Thanks, Keith. I'm still learning.

[ReeRay]

 

"bacon and tomato sandwich" - with quotes , 95 results

bacon and tomato sandwich - without quotes , 4776 resultsSearching with quotes only returns those images where the exact word order is matched. (which is standard search engine / database behaviour)Searching without quotes returns any images with all of the words, but, (probably) returns those with a close match in word order / word proximity higher in the results

This is not the same as using quotes in keywords themselves to keep words in meaningful phrases...

km

Thanks, Keith. I'm still learning.

It's difficult to imagine a closer search match than Bacon and tomato sandwich with or without "and" included.

 

What therefore causes the image to fall down the page when quotes are removed? Why doesn't it stay at the 7th position with the others falling in beneath?

 

I presume a higher rank of the other contributors ?

 

Bit confusing that one.

[Colblimp]

 

 

I think rank is out the window. Alamy is going to try to find the best pic, regardless of photographer.  This is a better service to the customer

 

Jill

Exactly! This is all Alamy cares about. We can moan and whinge all we want, it won't change anything, so what's the point of complaining?

 

As a newbie (just into my second year) I've only made 5 sales but I know I'll make more as my port increases in size and quality. I still don't understand the ranking system so I'm just going to keep keywording how I have been and I'm hoping the sales will still come in. 

 

Therefore, at the risk of a bunch of red arrows, stop whinging and just keep doing what you're doing!

[KevinS]

 

 

 

I think rank is out the window. Alamy is going to try to find the best pic, regardless of photographer.  This is a better service to the customer

 

Jill

Exactly! This is all Alamy cares about. We can moan and whinge all we want, it won't change anything, so what's the point of complaining?

 

As a newbie (just into my second year) I've only made 5 sales but I know I'll make more as my port increases in size and quality. I still don't understand the ranking system so I'm just going to keep keywording how I have been and I'm hoping the sales will still come in. 

 

Therefore, at the risk of a bunch of red arrows, stop whinging and just keep doing what you're doing!

 

 

But how does software find the "best pic"? Photographers with a good ranking are more apt to have good photos than those with poor ranking. I'll be surprised if it no longer counts.

[Colblimp]

 

 

 

 

I think rank is out the window. Alamy is going to try to find the best pic, regardless of photographer.  This is a better service to the customer

 

Jill

Exactly! This is all Alamy cares about. We can moan and whinge all we want, it won't change anything, so what's the point of complaining?

 

As a newbie (just into my second year) I've only made 5 sales but I know I'll make more as my port increases in size and quality. I still don't understand the ranking system so I'm just going to keep keywording how I have been and I'm hoping the sales will still come in. 

 

Therefore, at the risk of a bunch of red arrows, stop whinging and just keep doing what you're doing!

 

 

But how does software find the "best pic"? Photographers with a good ranking are more apt to have good photos than those with poor ranking. I'll be surprised if it no longer counts.

 

I know nothing about the software or how it works. I'm guessing the ranking system has completely changed, although I could be wrong.  Again, I'm just going to carry on as normal and not discuss it in-depth, as its a complete waste of time.