Proof- “Supertags” are not working properly - in fact they make image position worse.

[Guest Stockfotoart]

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[Doc]

I have had a further e-mail from CR as follows:

 

Hi Kumar

 

We have heard back from our team and they would be grateful for a bit more information.

 

Please could you let us know the Alamy image refs and what you changed to what in the metadata.

 

Thanks a lot,

 

 

 

I have sent them all the details and hopefully we will hear their thoughts

 

Kumar (The Doc one)

[Doc]

Well done Kumar, results are both fascinating and worrying - a big thank you for this analysis.

 

My OCD is working overtime  

 

Kumar (the Doc one)

[NYCat]

Do you remember "stacking"? That was a supposedly good idea that stacked our images. Didn't turn out well in practice and the forum then resembled what is happening now. I am happy to say that Alamy eventually abandoned it as a failed experiment. So perhaps they are busy sorting things out with this new experiment??? I hope so. I dream of an image manager that lets me type clear fonts into a roomy white field. One that doesn't change size and shape as I type. One where it is easy to delete, copy and paste. One, actually, much like the previous one but with larger thumbnails and the ability to add and remove keywords from batches without losing anything. Ahhh.. I am dreaming.

 

Paulette

[mickfly]

Do you remember "stacking"? That was a supposedly good idea that stacked our images. Didn't turn out well in practice and the forum then resembled what is happening now. I am happy to say that Alamy eventually abandoned it as a failed experiment. So perhaps they are busy sorting things out with this new experiment??? I hope so. I dream of an image manager that lets me type clear fonts into a roomy white field. One that doesn't change size and shape as I type. One where it is easy to delete, copy and paste. One, actually, much like the previous one but with larger thumbnails and the ability to add and remove keywords from batches without losing anything. Ahhh.. I am dreaming.

 

Paulette

Didn't we have a thread where we could make suggestions as to what we wanted from a new image manager?

 

Who even read it at Alamy (Ivory) Towers?

 

It seems that very few of the requested improvements have been made, except the removal of flash.

 

We now have a labour intensive over cluttered IM which certainly strains my eyes, clicking finger, temper and patience!

[M.Chapman]

 

ALAMY: "The changing of position of the images in search results has no relevance to the changes contributors make to tags, and supertags in AIM. At the moment and over the coming weeks and months, there will be a series of changes to enhance the search experience on Alamy which will result in the positions of image fluctuating.

 

We will not be able to go into specific details about the ins and outs of how each element works, but you should continue to tag and caption accurately adding supertags where relevant."

 

 

Alamy's answer is probably not well phrased.... I think they are simply warning that there are currently changes going on in the search algorithm from one day to the next. This makes it hard for contributors to know whether a change in image position is due to changes to their algorithm, or changes contributors have made to their tags.

 

Nevertheless it looks like evidence is mounting that the search engine is not currently working in the way that it should. I suspect the reason that Alamy are making so many changes is they are frantically trying to get it working properly and can only test performance by "going live". When they do fix it, supertags will be more important than tags. Hence their advice for us to keep tagging and super-tagging appropriately.

[Peter Stone]

 

 

....I looked at all 63 pages

 

You deserve a medal - that's above and beyond the call of duty! I can only do about 15 pages before my eyes stop registering the images.

 

 

If you type Cntrl F (or Cmd F on a Mac) and get the search box up and enter the image ref your looking for it will find it if it's on the current page. Much easier on the eyes. Works in Chrome, and I expect other browsers too. Best to set 120 images per page too, to speed it up.

 

 

Why didn't I think of that?! Thank you.

[Reimar]

 

Do you remember "stacking"? That was a supposedly good idea that stacked our images. Didn't turn out well in practice and the forum then resembled what is happening now. I am happy to say that Alamy eventually abandoned it as a failed experiment. So perhaps they are busy sorting things out with this new experiment??? I hope so. I dream of an image manager that lets me type clear fonts into a roomy white field. One that doesn't change size and shape as I type. One where it is easy to delete, copy and paste. One, actually, much like the previous one but with larger thumbnails and the ability to add and remove keywords from batches without losing anything. Ahhh.. I am dreaming.

 

Paulette

Didn't we have a thread where we could make suggestions as to what we wanted from a new image manager?

 

Who even read it at Alamy (Ivory) Towers?

 

It seems that very few of the requested improvements have been made, except the removal of flash.

 

We now have a labour intensive over cluttered IM which certainly strains my eyes, clicking finger, temper and patience!

 

 

Well said. 

I've said it before, but I think it was very unprofessional of Alamy to specially require us to spend a lot of time filling in three keyword boxes, and to now take those duplicated keywords from three boxes and combine them into a tag set without deleting duplicates (or providing functionality for us to optionally do so).

I too continue to waste time doing search tests to try to figure out what Alamy has done.  It appears however, that Alamy is moving the goal posts daily. 

 

Alamy: we're not asking for nuclear detonation codes.  Could you please give us more basic information about how the new search algorithms (are supposed to) work?  Post it in a blog so it's a level playing field.  Right now, search results are not making any sense to me.

[Martin P Wilson]

 

....I looked at all 63 pages

 

You deserve a medal - that's above and beyond the call of duty! I can only do about 15 pages before my eyes stop registering the images.

 

 

Me too normally. But I had to be sure about what I was seeing, or more accurately, not seeing.

[RedSnapper]

Horlogerie Honfleur

 

zero results.....

[Martin P Wilson]

Horlogerie Honfleur

 

zero results.....

 

Exactly and other key words do not pull them up. horlogerie was in both caption (where it might have been concatenated with the next word on a new line!) and tags.

 

I will see what happens when the database is updated and then report it as a bug if it is still an issue.

[RedSnapper]

what are the image refs

 

km

[Foreign Export]

Well Doc's work and Jill's clearly show there is a problem- and quite a significant one - although I would assess the fix should be pretty quick.

 

Would be good to hear from Alamy that firstly they accept the findings given here and secondly some specifics as to how/when the search tool will be corrected 

[wiskerke]

Horlogerie Honfleur

 

zero results.....

Try Horlogerie soldeshonfleur

 

 

 

wim

 

edit: note the discrepancy between keywords and caption.

edit 2: hey now the keywords and caption are looking correct.

Horlogerie Honfleur still no match though.

 

[Betty LaRue]

 

ALAMY: "The changing of position of the images in search results has no relevance to the changes contributors make to tags, and supertags in AIM. At the moment and over the coming weeks and months, there will be a series of changes to enhance the search experience on Alamy which will result in the positions of image fluctuating.

 

We will not be able to go into specific details about the ins and outs of how each element works, but you should continue to tag and caption accurately adding supertags where relevant."

 

 

Alamy's answer is probably not well phrased.... I think they are simply warning that there are currently changes going on in the search algorithm from one day to the next. This makes it hard for contributors to know whether a change in image position is due to changes to their algorithm, or changes contributors have made to their tags.

 

Nevertheless it looks like evidence is mounting that the search engine is not currently working in the way that it should. I suspect the reason that Alamy are making so many changes is they are frantically trying to get it working properly and can only test performance by "going live". When they do fix it, supertags will be more important than tags. Hence their advice for us to keep tagging and super-tagging appropriately.

I agree. As I said before, I'm going to keep on keeping on. I believe it will all come out in the wash when thing are tweaked, tested and fixed. Right now, we're just the gunea pigs. Here my squeaky wheel? That's me keeping on.

[ChrisC]

 

Horlogerie Honfleur

 

zero results.....

 

Exactly and other key words do not pull them up. horlogerie was in both caption (where it might have been concatenated with the next word on a new line!) and tags.

 

I will see what happens when the database is updated and then report it as a bug if it is still an issue.

 

Have you tried changing your tag/keyword and see what happens?

 

I just searched for "Horlogerie Honfleur" and had no results and then looked at your image, if you type in "horlogerie destockage", which is what the keyword is on your image (in quotation marks), if you do that search, then your image turns up, try adding "horlogerie" as one word tag.keyword and see what happens when it updates?

 

Obviously as its in the caption, it should appear as Horlogerie Honfleur, but it isn't

[Guest Stockfotoart]

-

[AlunK9]

Thank you very much for your work, Kumar.

[Martin P Wilson]

 

 

Horlogerie Honfleur

 

zero results.....

 

Exactly and other key words do not pull them up. horlogerie was in both caption (where it might have been concatenated with the next word on a new line!) and tags.

 

I will see what happens when the database is updated and then report it as a bug if it is still an issue.

 

Have you tried changing your tag/keyword and see what happens?

 

I just searched for "Horlogerie Honfleur" and had no results and then looked at your image, if you type in "horlogerie destockage", which is what the keyword is on your image (in quotation marks), if you do that search, then your image turns up, try adding "horlogerie" as one word tag.keyword and see what happens when it updates?

 

Obviously as its in the caption, it should appear as Horlogerie Honfleur, but it isn't

 

 

Thanks. I'm tinkering with tags/caption and its probably between updates but I don't plan major rework until things have settled down, Probably sometime in 2020!

 

It would be a bit worrying if tags and search are case sensitive as well!

[Doc]

I pursued my tests decribed above and asked two people who had never been to the alamy's web site before to do the searches I mentioned. They send me a screen shot. The results are identical with my search results in chrome when I was logged out.

 

@Kumar it would be interesting to  know if your results are the same with a different browser and logged out of alamy.

 

I'm not the expert but I wonder if search results are dependent about individual search history which would make perfect sense from customer side of view.

 

Hi Stockfotoart,

 

I normally do my searches using Chrome while logged in. I took your suggestion and repeated the searches using MS Edge while logged out. The searches were the same, though I noted that while Chrme defaults to the "Relevant" tab for me, Edge defaulted to the "Creative" tab so I had to change to relevant.

 

I take the point that the total number of images in each search seems very slightly different for some reason (less than 0.5%), for which I have no answer as to the reason, but the images in the pages I looked at were the same images in the same order in both browsers

 

Cheers

 

Kumar (the Doc one)

[Guest Stockfotoart]

 

-

[Ed Rooney]

I see "Creative" as another questionable search tool, Doc.

 

2020, Martin? Aren't you the optimist.

[ReeRay]

@Doc - sent you a PM

[mickfly]

 

 

ALAMY: "The changing of position of the images in search results has no relevance to the changes contributors make to tags, and supertags in AIM. At the moment and over the coming weeks and months, there will be a series of changes to enhance the search experience on Alamy which will result in the positions of image fluctuating.

 

We will not be able to go into specific details about the ins and outs of how each element works, but you should continue to tag and caption accurately adding supertags where relevant."

 

Alamy's answer is probably not well phrased.... I think they are simply warning that there are currently changes going on in the search algorithm from one day to the next. This makes it hard for contributors to know whether a change in image position is due to changes to their algorithm, or changes contributors have made to their tags.

 

Nevertheless it looks like evidence is mounting that the search engine is not currently working in the way that it should. I suspect the reason that Alamy are making so many changes is they are frantically trying to get it working properly and can only test performance by "going live". When they do fix it, supertags will be more important than tags. Hence their advice for us to keep tagging and super-tagging appropriately.

I agree. As I said before, I'm going to keep on keeping on. I believe it will all come out in the wash when thing are tweaked, tested and fixed. Right now, we're just the gunea pigs. Here my squeaky wheel? That's me keeping on.

 

Sorry Betty, but keeping on keeping on will make ALAMY believe that everything is hunky dory, it isn't, and in my opinion we need to let our thoughts be known as we are getting almost bugger all feedback in the forum from them!

[Reimar]

Just to reiterate my findings from another thread confirming Doc and other's findings:

Reimar, on 16 Feb 2017 - 3:11 PM, said:

 

Reimar, on 13 Feb 2017 - 10:50 AM, said:

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).