Order of tags matters?

[Betty LaRue]

What I do, if two tags need to be next to each other is to enter them again, taking care to enter pie apple in that order so they appear as apple pie. Really doesn't take long. 15-30 seconds?

[Guest Stockfotoart]

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[Steve Valentia]

 

 

Yes, it does. It has always mattered as Alamy have stated a number of times.

 

Jill

 

well I read the blog about tagging four times meanwhile, they don't say anything about that - do you know where they say it matters?

 

 

I'm gong by a number of posts on the forum, one not too long ago.

 

Jill

 

 

So, are you saying that Alamy think it's important or that the forum members think it's important? It's not the same thing.

[Jill Morgan]

 

 

 

Yes, it does. It has always mattered as Alamy have stated a number of times.

 

Jill

 

well I read the blog about tagging four times meanwhile, they don't say anything about that - do you know where they say it matters?

 

 

I'm gong by a number of posts on the forum, one not too long ago.

 

Jill

 

 

So, are you saying that Alamy think it's important or that the forum members think it's important? It's not the same thing.

 

 

Alamy thinks it's important for better search results. Whether you think it is important is strictly up to you.

 

Jill

[Jon Lewis]

Hi All

 

 

Just had some images pass QC the keywords came over OK from Capture One in the order I had selected but change a tag to super tag and it screws up the order WHY?

 

Also not importing the caption from ITPC WHY?

 

Regards

 

Jon

[tarsierspectral]

Hi All

 

 

Just had some images pass QC the keywords came over OK from Capture One in the order I had selected but change a tag to super tag and it screws up the order WHY?

 

Also not importing the caption from ITPC WHY?

 

Regards

 

Jon

 

Caption in Alamy = Description in IPTC

[Jon Lewis]

Thanks we need a glossary now 

 

 

Thinking of sending in an image with a number in every field to see what goes where

 

Jon

[Stokie]

What I do, if two tags need to be next to each other is to enter them again, taking care to enter pie apple in that order so they appear as apple pie. Really doesn't take long. 15-30 seconds?

 

But what a farce that all is!! It certainly isn't intuitive to have to enter the tags in reverse order, and why should we have to re-enter any tags if they are there as keywords. Surely being able to move tags around would be more logical.

 

John.

[Steve Valentia]

I've sold any number of images where the keywords haven't been sequential. I'll not be wasting time on getting tagging perfect. To paraphrase Eric Morcambe  (or Eddie Braben, to be precise)...I'll use all the right words, but not necessarily in the right order.

[Betty LaRue]

 

What I do, if two tags need to be next to each other is to enter them again, taking care to enter pie apple in that order so they appear as apple pie. Really doesn't take long. 15-30 seconds?

 

 

But what a farce that all is!! It certainly isn't intuitive to have to enter the tags in reverse order, and why should we have to re-enter any tags if they are there as keywords. Surely being able to move tags around would be more logical.

 

John.

Of course, in a perfect world. I totally agree that's it should be imperative to fix it where we can move our tags around. I'm just offering a workaround until hopefully that happens.

Alamy isn't ignoring these threads. Maybe I'm a Pollyanna, but I think they want to make it workable. But there's so many things need changing, I doubt they can be done instantly.

I shall have faith.

[M.Chapman]

This was my email to Alamy:

 

There seems to be some confusion between contributors on whether keyword order matters. 

 

Here on the blog we are told placement of keywords is important:

"Try to avoid adding alphabetical lists of tags. Proximity of one tag compared to another used in a multi-word search can have an effect on where it appears in the sort order, which is why we’d recommend adding phrases / multi-word tags where appropriate."

But then someone recieved an email with this info:

"The order of tags and supertags is not relevant to the search results and they carry the same weighting in search results regardless of order. Tags are ordered by when they were added so the tags you add first are at the top."

 

The two statements contradict each other.  Does order matter or not?  Should I be sure that "toronto" and "ontario" are next to each other, or does it matter? Will a search for "toronto ontario" give my image the same position whether they two tags are next to each other or 5 tags apart?

 

Jil

 

 

This is their response:

 

Hi Jill,

 

The order isn’t as important as the proximity; for example if you had an image of New York City, and tagging it with Beautiful, Streets, People, Metropolitan, however you ordered your tags, you would want New, York, and City to be next to each other within the tags, to make sure the image is optimally searchable;

NOT New, Beautiful, City, Streets, People, York, Metropolian

BUT Beautiful, Streets, New, York, City, Metropolitan, People

 

Ideally you would make New York City a Supertag Phrase.

 

So for Toronto, if you were tagging it as Toronto Ontario, you would want the tags to be next to each other if separate, or as a phrase.

 

Hope this helps!

 

Thanks,

 

Siobhan

Contributor Relations

 

 

 

So whether the two tags are first, tenth or 40th, doesn't matter as long as they stay next to each other.

 

Jill

 

Is it just me, or is this ridiculous?

 

It appears that either Alamy CR don't know how their own system works (and are giving out incorrect info about the tag proximity influencing results), or they've designed an incompatible MI system.

 

If proximity of tags is important, why on earth doesn't the new MI allow us to change tag order without having to re-enter the whole lot?

 

If tag proximity actually makes no difference, the new MI is OK. But then why are Alamy CR giving out incorrect information?

 

NB. I'm talking about the order/proximity of tags. I'm happy to force keyword order/proximity by placing multiple keywords within a single tag where appropriate, but I don't want to worry about the orders of tags or supertags at all, since the new MI makes this virtually impossible to control.

 

Maybe Alamy CR are being sloppy in their terminology and when they say tag they should be saying keyword? A keyword is just a keyword, but a tag maybe a single keyword or a collection of keywords (=phrase).

 

I'm awful confused   Is it just me? 

[Graham]

Is it just me, or is this ridiculous?

No, it's not just you, and yes, it is.  The conflicting information that contributors are being given does not stand up to scrutiny.

 

This evening I did try amending some tags on some old images where there were less than 50 tags and the conversion had produced sub-optimal results.  On entering new tags directly, there is no spel cheker.  I cannot touch type, I look at the keyboard.  I am the proverbial keyboard fat finger.  Were I an investment banker trader, the world's financial systems would have been in meltdown years ago.  At 61, I am not going to change my ways.  There is still the old-fashioned (and very welcome) spell checker on the captions, but not for tags.  Why not?  Is this not pretty basic for any application that involves text entry?  I wish I had counted how many corrections I have had to go back to make in even this short post: well into double figures.  I need my wavy red underlines.

 

Graham