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Hmmm, I have 10 high discoverable files, 3038 poor discoverable, no medium and goodness knows where the others are.

 

I too don't believe that every file needs 50 keywords. That leads to spam and search irrelevancy.

 

In fact, the ten 'high discoverable' are only because the system has split keyword phrases, e.g. Prince, Alwaleed, Bin, Talal, Centre, for, the, Study, of, Islam, in, the, Contemporar, World, has each word as a separate tag. I must have done that wrongly when I uploaded it. 1

 

For some reason, tryng to add "Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World" into "add new tags" isn't letting me add it. When I try to do it, the add tags field just blanks out, and the phrase hasn't been added.

Any suggestions? That phrase is what the photo is, it's not likely to be looked at under any other search.

 

I tested other random keywords and keyword phrases which worked fine (and delted them again): is "Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World" too long for the system?

(The files can be searched on the full search string, thank goodness, therefore I'm happy that they are 'high discoverability".

 

OTOH, my file will show up in searches for bin etc <rolls eyes>, which I hate. If I delete the individual keywords, the file won't be discoverable at all, except extremely generic searches like 'door', 'entrance' or 'front elevation'.

 

This new system seems far clunkier even than the previous one, at least for editing existing files.

 

1Now I suspect that I didn't do it wrongly when I uploaded, but that the system doesn't accept longer keyword phrases, so split existing long phrases.

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Maximum tag length is 30 characters or 4 words.

Adding an overlong tag usually truncates it to 30. I would just split it into  3 or 4 separate tags without commas. You can do this even if the constituent words are already there.

Edited by spacecadet
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Maximum tag length is 30 characters or 4 words.

Insane, but thanks for the info.

I was trying to add 'Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil" (to another of my 'good discoverability' files with split keyword phrases) and it kept adding it after I typed in Knowledge, so that explains it.

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For some reason, tryng to add "Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World" into "add new tags" isn't letting me add it. When I try to do it, the add tags field just blanks out, and the phrase hasn't been added.

 

Any suggestions? That phrase is what the photo is, it's not likely to be looked at under any other search.

Really? Just that one long search term (has it ever been used? check the All of Alamy seach pages.)

 I could imagine other searches....such as:

 

islam study centre

Prince Alwaleed centre

Islamic study centre

Contemporary Islam Study centre

 

etc etc

 

km

 

 

 

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If "discoverability" measured the relevancy and effectiveness of keyword-choice then it would be useful tool. How that could be accomplished, I don't know -- it's way too much for my tiny analog brain. As it stands, the "discoverability" bar just seems to be a cool-looking feature that doesn't mean a whole lot. It reminds me of a tachometer on the dashboard of a car with automatic transmission.

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For some reason, tryng to add "Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World" into "add new tags" isn't letting me add it. When I try to do it, the add tags field just blanks out, and the phrase hasn't been added.

 

Any suggestions? That phrase is what the photo is, it's not likely to be looked at under any other search.

Really? Just that one long search term (has it ever been used? check the All of Alamy seach pages.)

 I could imagine other searches....such as:

 

islam study centre

Prince Alwaleed centre

Islamic study centre

Contemporary Islam Study centre

 

etc etc

 

km

 

It certainly hasn't sold. It's a file either you need or you don't need.

These keyword phases are searchable as combinations of the individual (split) words.

 

I'm more concerned about polluted searches. No-one will search on 'bin' and randomly decide they want my file!

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If "discoverability" measured the relevancy and effectiveness of keyword-choice then it would be useful tool. How that could be accomplished, I don't know -- it's way too much for my tiny analog brain. As it stands, the "discoverability" bar just seems to be a cool-looking feature that doesn't mean a whole lot. It reminds me of a tachometer on the dashboard of a car with automatic transmission.

 

It's useless.

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If "discoverability" measured the relevancy and effectiveness of keyword-choice then it would be useful tool. How that could be accomplished, I don't know -- it's way too much for my tiny analog brain. As it stands, the "discoverability" bar just seems to be a cool-looking feature that doesn't mean a whole lot. It reminds me of a tachometer on the dashboard of a car with automatic transmission.

 

It's useless.

 

 

I was trying to be a polite Canadian. B)

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If "discoverability" measured the relevancy and effectiveness of keyword-choice then it would be useful tool. How that could be accomplished, I don't know -- it's way too much for my tiny analog brain. As it stands, the "discoverability" bar just seems to be a cool-looking feature that doesn't mean a whole lot. It reminds me of a tachometer on the dashboard of a car with automatic transmission.

 

It's useless.

 

 

I was trying to be a polite Canadian. B)

 

 

No need, it's better to say it as it is!  

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If "discoverability" measured the relevancy and effectiveness of keyword-choice then it would be useful tool. How that could be accomplished, I don't know -- it's way too much for my tiny analog brain. As it stands, the "discoverability" bar just seems to be a cool-looking feature that doesn't mean a whole lot. It reminds me of a tachometer on the dashboard of a car with automatic transmission.

 

It's useless.

 

 

I was trying to be a polite Canadian. B)

 

 

No need, it's better to say it as it is!  

 

 

Which doesn't mean that the "discoverability" feature couldn't be made more useful. Hopefully, Alamy has plans for it...

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If "discoverability" measured the relevancy and effectiveness of keyword-choice then it would be useful tool. How that could be accomplished, I don't know -- it's way too much for my tiny analog brain. As it stands, the "discoverability" bar just seems to be a cool-looking feature that doesn't mean a whole lot. It reminds me of a tachometer on the dashboard of a car with automatic transmission.

 

It's useless.

 

 

I was trying to be a polite Canadian. B)

 

 

No need, it's better to say it as it is!  

 

 

Which doesn't mean that the "discoverability" feature couldn't be made more useful. Hopefully, Alamy has plans for it...

 

 

i suspect that there are a number of features in the new AIM tool which Alamy have plans for and have only introduced a placeholder implementation for now until they get the full functionality they have planned working.

Something that I hope for is that they manage to do away with the daily update of the search engine so that when an image says it is 'On Sale' in AIM, that it truly is 'On Sale' even though you might only have finished keywording it 5 or 10 minutes previously.

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OK, I've read the article and it throws up loads of questions, but I'll stick to this one for now:

 

Stemming.

I'd think a person searching 'cat' probably wants to see only one cat; however, someone searching 'cats' might want plural cats, or might want to see all Alamy pics with cats, singular or plural, in them. Why am I wrong?

More specifically, someone searching e.g. "British Birds" probably is looking to see all the species which are available to choose from, not necessarily plural birds in one image.

So if we have singular, should we always automatically add the plural, if the above logic holds?

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"So if we have singular, should we always automatically add the plural, if the above logic holds?"

 

 

that is my approach.

I can imagine a magazine editor saying to the picture researcher .."I want to use a photo of women using iPads for this feature.." .    Meaning 'a woman using an iPad'..but you'd need the plurals of both 'woman' and 'iPad' to cover the situation

 

seems to work for me

 

km

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"So if we have singular, should we always automatically add the plural, if the above logic holds?"

 

 

that is my approach.

I can imagine a magazine editor saying to the picture researcher .."I want to use a photo of women using iPads for this feature.." .    Meaning 'a woman using an iPad'..but you'd need the plurals of both 'woman' and 'iPad' to cover the situation

 

seems to work for me

 

km

 

That has been my reasoning as well. However, after reading this post by Alamy, I've been going back and removing a lot of plurals. :unsure:

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Thanks, Keith. Good to see my logic was sound.

That was the article I was referring to, John.

 

Still, I've checked a random set and it seems my low discoverability files are perfectly discoverable under a relevant search, if not so much by the mysterious 'creative', which often isn't a 'clean' search.

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"So if we have singular, should we always automatically add the plural, if the above logic holds?"

 

 

that is my approach.

I can imagine a magazine editor saying to the picture researcher .."I want to use a photo of women using iPads for this feature.." .    Meaning 'a woman using an iPad'..but you'd need the plurals of both 'woman' and 'iPad' to cover the situation

 

seems to work for me

 

km

 

This is my approach as well. I remember years ago on the old forum when an image researcher said "I might search for 'dogs' as in 'show me pictures of your dogs' even if I want only one dog'.

I've always added both since. 

Edited by gvallee
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In an attempt to see how I can best use keywords to help my images surface near the top, I've been carrying out random searches and looking at the keywords of images that appear first. The result is quite surprising. For example, a search for "tate modern" returns a picture in first place where the word "modern" appears only once, not as a keyword but in the caption. There are only eight tags in total - and they are all single words. So much for poor discoverability. I'm in no hurry to flesh out my keywords - in fact it's more likely that I will start a wholesale purge. 

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In an attempt to see how I can best use keywords to help my images surface near the top, I've been carrying out random searches and looking at the keywords of images that appear first. The result is quite surprising. For example, a search for "tate modern" returns a picture in first place where the word "modern" appears only once, not as a keyword but in the caption. There are only eight tags in total - and they are all single words. So much for poor discoverability. I'm in no hurry to flesh out my keywords - in fact it's more likely that I will start a wholesale purge. 

 

you can't see all the keywords

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In an attempt to see how I can best use keywords to help my images surface near the top, I've been carrying out random searches and looking at the keywords of images that appear first. The result is quite surprising. For example, a search for "tate modern" returns a picture in first place where the word "modern" appears only once, not as a keyword but in the caption. There are only eight tags in total - and they are all single words. So much for poor discoverability. I'm in no hurry to flesh out my keywords - in fact it's more likely that I will start a wholesale purge. 

 

you can't see all the keywords

 

I see all mine in the same search - all 39 of them.

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In an attempt to see how I can best use keywords to help my images surface near the top, I've been carrying out random searches and looking at the keywords of images that appear first. The result is quite surprising. For example, a search for "tate modern" returns a picture in first place where the word "modern" appears only once, not as a keyword but in the caption. There are only eight tags in total - and they are all single words. So much for poor discoverability. I'm in no hurry to flesh out my keywords - in fact it's more likely that I will start a wholesale purge. 

 

you can't see all the keywords

 

I see all mine in the same search - all 39 of them.

 

 

I don't

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"I've been going back and removing a lot of plurals"

 

 

i won't be....

 

 

km

I've been working at both ends of my images. I found on the oldest, I didn't have plurals. I've been adding them in.

 

 

Yeah, I'm going to go back and put some of the plurals back in. Fortunately, I haven't reworked that many images, so it won't be too onerous a task.

 

You have to be careful, though. My guess that a person looking for a picture of a "cat" might also search for "cats". However, someone looking for an image of a cat sleeping on a rug probably wouldn't also search for "cats sleeping on rugs". It can be a tough call sometimes.

Edited by John Mitchell
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