Jump to content

Another search engine shake-up?


Recommended Posts

 

 

Caption significance was always quoted as "medium". If it has changed we should have been told. It would certainly have changed some of my keywording tagging behaviour lately- I wouldn't have bothered with a lot of new phrase tags.

 

Agreed.  Since supertags don't seem to have much effect, right now, we're better off stacking the caption with important keywords to the text limit whether it makes grammatical sense or not.

 

 

 

+1 Reimar

 
The algro is probably also hunting in the caption for search terms so that the reportage images will show up.
 
Some reportage images only have a caption, without tabs or keywords, but show up high in searches.
 
The best thing would be to have the same supertab phrase in the caption as well, it will probably raise you in the search order.
 
Both extensive captions and supertabs

 

But of course the caption for stock images is limited to far fewer characters than for news,  or tags.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not that this is news, but just for emphasis....

 

The other day I cleaned up the BHZ images for my 3 pseudos.  That means deleting duplicate keywords (getting them down to below 50) and adding supertags to the 10 limit.  They promptly fell about 4-5 pages in the BHZ search results.

 

Having BHZ only as a supertag, I then added BHZ to the caption.  My best pseudo went from page 9 to 1, and my second tier pseudos went from page 23 to 8.  Wow!

The caption is clearly a super-duper tag.

 

Just to add to my confusion:

I deleted bhz from my captions.  Today, the two poorer pseudos went back to page 23 (from 8).  Ok, that I get.

But my best pseudo went from page 1 all the way down to page 22 (not page 9 where it was).

Why on earth would that happen?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe I'm all wet, here. But BHZ is used by only a select set of contributors. To me, what you are measuring is your image against other BHZ users images.

Please help me understand. So you have an image of a well-photographed subject. There are 3000 images of that subject. You use one or two word search of that subject. Your image is competing with 2999 other images. It might fall on page 30.

 

But you do another search with BHZ. Out of those 3000 images, your only competing with everyone else that's using BHZ. Maybe out of those 3000 images, there are 200 BHZ users. So you are competing with 199 images. Your image might pop up on page 1.

 

I can kind of understand how using BHZ can give you an idea as to whether your rank is rising or falling, but can't quite get how it helps with anything else. And as we seem to think, rank is out the window, lol.

 

I guess because I don't understand it is why I never played that game.

I just do searches like this.

Peanut butter cookies. See where it is. Check a week later...see where it is. Meanwhile, 50 more images of peanut butter cookies may have been added in that week skewing the results.

Betty

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Not that this is news, but just for emphasis....

 

The other day I cleaned up the BHZ images for my 3 pseudos.  That means deleting duplicate keywords (getting them down to below 50) and adding supertags to the 10 limit.  They promptly fell about 4-5 pages in the BHZ search results.

 

Having BHZ only as a supertag, I then added BHZ to the caption.  My best pseudo went from page 9 to 1, and my second tier pseudos went from page 23 to 8.  Wow!

The caption is clearly a super-duper tag.

 

Just to add to my confusion:

I deleted bhz from my captions.  Today, the two poorer pseudos went back to page 23 (from 8).  Ok, that I get.

But my best pseudo went from page 1 all the way down to page 22 (not page 9 where it was).

Why on earth would that happen?

 

 

Just to follow this up a bit further...

Having made the BHZ supertag into a regular tag, all three images moved up.  The two second tier from page 23 to page 22, and my best pseudo from page 22 to page 6.

Thus confirming the general finding that supertags demote an image in search results (well done Alamy).

 

For those put off by BHZ, keep in mind this is just a search term like any other.  As Betty has pointed out, it avoids the problem of peanut butter cookie images coming on stream.  I have one image for each pseudo that I can easily recognize (try finding your cookie among thousands of others).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

Not that this is news, but just for emphasis....

 

The other day I cleaned up the BHZ images for my 3 pseudos.  That means deleting duplicate keywords (getting them down to below 50) and adding supertags to the 10 limit.  They promptly fell about 4-5 pages in the BHZ search results.

 

Having BHZ only as a supertag, I then added BHZ to the caption.  My best pseudo went from page 9 to 1, and my second tier pseudos went from page 23 to 8.  Wow!

The caption is clearly a super-duper tag.

 

Just to add to my confusion:

I deleted bhz from my captions.  Today, the two poorer pseudos went back to page 23 (from 8).  Ok, that I get.

But my best pseudo went from page 1 all the way down to page 22 (not page 9 where it was).

Why on earth would that happen?

 

 

Just to follow this up a bit further...

Having made the BHZ supertag into a regular tag, all three images moved up.  The two second tier from page 23 to page 22, and my best pseudo from page 22 to page 6.

Thus confirming the general finding that supertags demote an image in search results (well done Alamy).

 

For those put off by BHZ, keep in mind this is just a search term like any other.  As Betty has pointed out, it avoids the problem of peanut butter cookie images coming on stream.  I have one image for each pseudo that I can easily recognize (try finding your cookie among thousands of others).

 

 

 

Then we should make all tags normal tags and not have any supertags? :blink:

 

Allan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No shake up today.  Nor any database update since the weekend.  I'm trying to do some testing.

Waiting, waiting....

Not since Thursday, I reckon. It's not just me then.

And the measures was updated at 0200Z yesterday, but it didn't show until this morning.

Those elves must be flat-out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

re Supertags demoting an image.

This is such an obvious error, and one which renders the whole tagging premise meaningless, so it will be addressed by Alamy surely ?

And sooner rather than later I would think, otherwise client's searches are going to be less effective and Alamy's sales will suffer.

So, no point in doing anything other than giving the Supertags the essential keywords (as was) and the normal Tags the comprehensive keywords, on the 

assumption that the universe will correct itself and all will be well on Alamy-world again. 

 

I know this sounds like stating the bleedin' obvious but I think it's best to get a second opinion on everything at the moment.

 

Geoff S (the interloper)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

re Supertags demoting an image.

This is such an obvious error, and one which renders the whole tagging premise meaningless, so it will be addressed by Alamy surely ?

And sooner rather than later I would think, otherwise client's searches are going to be less effective and Alamy's sales will suffer.

So, no point in doing anything other than giving the Supertags the essential keywords (as was) and the normal Tags the comprehensive keywords, on the 

assumption that the universe will correct itself and all will be well on Alamy-world again. 

 

I know this sounds like stating the bleedin' obvious but I think it's best to get a second opinion on everything at the moment.

 

Geoff S (the interloper)

 

My own very thorough testing has not shown that supertags demote an image at all. I know others have seen that they do, but that's not my own experience. I'm not saying that I'm right and they're wrong, only that it isn't consistent. Sure, I've seen the odd drop in placement after adding various tags or supertags in some situations, but that could be down to other issues. Overall though placement has not changed FOR ME when adding supertags. Supertags are definitely not doing what they should though, there's no doubt about that at all. My own tests show that supertags carry the same weight as tags, and multi-word supertags carry the same weight as 2 single supertags. Also, captions carry the most weight of all, and adding supertags to an image for words that are already in the caption has no effect on placement. Captions are king, basically, no matter what tags or supertags you have.

 

It's basically a mess and is hard to believe Alamy felt the search engine was ready for use.

 

Geoff S (the original).  :P

 

 

Thanks for sharing Geoff. It seems like you have invested a lot of time and effort investigating the behaviour of the search engine.

 

I suspect that over time (hopefully soon), we will see the behaviour change. You point out two issue which are obviously not working as planned, namely the fact that supertags don't seem to make a difference and that the caption seems to have too much weight. I would be surprised if Alamy aren't working on this as a priority at the moment and expect that it could "be fixed" with no notice... at which point I expect there will be a lot of noise on the forum as everyone announces their new positions.  ;)

 

So I guess the thing to do is probably to follow Alamy's stock response on keywording which is just to keyword sensibly/normally and wait for the situation to sort itself out. I guess we just need to drink that Koolaid that Betty's been drinking (mentioned in another post somewhere).   :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.