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3 months after the search engine shakeup, when most contributors thought the sky was falling, or going to fall in March, how's it going for you?

I see more good news than bad in "How was your March?" but am not sure if that's a good indicator.

 

For me, my images, for the most part, are placed well. Many on the first page. Zooms are good, sales are normal. The sky is pretty much where it's always been.

 

Betty

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I had a good-for-me March, in terms of sales and revenue. My zooms and CTR are trending up nicely.

 

Re the new Image Manager:  I tried improving a handful, then gave up. But I've been a user of quotes for my multi-word search terms ever since the last notational change, so maybe that put me in good stead.

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Yes, Bill, I have used quotes and commas. Sometimes I got lazy in Comprehensive where I usually only had location, and a few other less important tags and just used spaces. Those are strung together in a megaphrase. :(

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No significant change in number of sales or zooms, but price per image certainly not showing any improvement.

 

I've spent quite a bit of time improving tags, found a few mistakes and probably introduced some new ones, but no evidence that this will help or hinder sales. I will probably eventually work my way through my entire collection, it beats watching TV.

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Have not uploaded for a couple of years nor have I attempted to use the new image manager and after a year of CTR bumbling along at 0.8 it gradually dropped last year to 0.5 by nov. In december it rose to 1.0 and has remained there ever since. Sales volume increasing slowly but prices still reducing resulting in year on year fall in income. Some single word and many double word searches show up at least one file on page 1 inspite of none of my images having good discoverability. I have always used a comprehensive title and most of my keywords have been included in the title and rarely use more than 6 keywords.

 

So far the new system has been kind to me and i have not changed a thing so just wondering what all the fuss is about!

 

Regen

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For me the sky has fallen

 

Sales views and zooms have all collapsed. CTR is on a downward trend.

 

The worst part of it is, I can't work out why. My portfolio can't suddenly become utterly awful and, before December, sales were growing steadily. 

 

Even more frustratingly, if I edit the keywords and captions on existing images to make sure appropriate words and phrases are supertagged, my images tend to drop further down the search results.

 

It seems the changes have produced winners and losers.

 

I seem to have lost.

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I went through my entire port tweeking tags and supertags, only for my placings to bomb. At the time I hadn't noticed the comments that claimed that captions are perhaps the most weightiest of search terms, so my current thinking is that is so, and that I'll need to go back through with that in mind.

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Changes appear to have been good for me so far (I'm over 100% up on this time last year). But then I always did use commas to separate keywords and quotes around phrases, and put quite a lot in the caption. This was because in the old system I found that having the right info in multiple places (caption, essential and main) improved image placement.

 

As a result I haven't felt the need to go back through my old images changing tags etc. I figured I'd wait until the system settles down.

 

However, I suspect once Alamy fix the ranking and the priority given supertag vs tag vs caption bugs, then sales may drop back.

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Going a little off topic, I put in a lot of work yesterday keywording a great number of time-sensitive images which I'd uploaded before going on holiday (EU, Brexit, floral tributes around Parliament) plus the boat race from Sunday only to find that the database hasn't updated. That's frustrating.

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December - March.

Monthly averages against monthly average of 2016:

Numbers up: +  2.5%

Money down: - 20.75%

(gross; have not done a net comparison yet)

 

wim

 

edit:

it's worse when I look at the numbers of 2015 vs 2016.

totals for the whole of 2016 were:

Numbers up: + 60%

Money up:   + 31%

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Going a little off topic, I put in a lot of work yesterday keywording a great number of time-sensitive images which I'd uploaded before going on holiday (EU, Brexit, floral tributes around Parliament) plus the boat race from Sunday only to find that the database hasn't updated. That's frustrating.

 

Wouldn't some of these have been better uploaded as Alamy Live News if they were time-sensative?

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Going a little off topic, I put in a lot of work yesterday keywording a great number of time-sensitive images which I'd uploaded before going on holiday (EU, Brexit, floral tributes around Parliament) plus the boat race from Sunday only to find that the database hasn't updated. That's frustrating.

 

Wouldn't some of these have been better uploaded as Alamy Live News if they were time-sensative?

 

I uploaded Live News at the time. I subsequently carry out editing and fine tuning - and often a better selection of the images - once home and able to view them on a larger pc screen. These I hope will be far more attractive as stock images than those uploaded straight from the camera 'live'. Many of these kinds of stories carry on through the week and beyond, so I'd rather that picture editors see the better quality images than the unedited versions.

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Going a little off topic, I put in a lot of work yesterday keywording a great number of time-sensitive images which I'd uploaded before going on holiday (EU, Brexit, floral tributes around Parliament) plus the boat race from Sunday only to find that the database hasn't updated. That's frustrating.

 

Wouldn't some of these have been better uploaded as Alamy Live News if they were time-sensative?

 

I uploaded Live News at the time. I subsequently carry out editing and fine tuning - and often a better selection of the images - once home and able to view them on a larger pc screen. These I hope will be far more attractive as stock images than those uploaded straight from the camera 'live'. Many of these kinds of stories carry on through the week and beyond, so I'd rather that picture editors see the better quality images than the unedited versions.

 

 

I guess so longer as the images weren't older than 24 hours, you could feasibly upload a second batch from home so long as your editing isn't adding or removing elements from pictures or changing the content such that it is no longer a true representation of what you saw with the eye.

 

But this does take time which isn't alway available. I understand your frustration!

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The sky caved in for me too Joseph. My searches (according to BHZ) fell 16 pages to 17 and sales fell too. My pseudo containing news images is the best performing according to Alamy but very few sales come from that. However it might back up the theory that captions are more relevant as news images captions generally carry more information in my news image subs.

I've slowly been re-tagging my portfolio because it looked such a mess even though an e-mail from contributor relations said it wasn't really necessary. I've still got some way to go with that. It's hard to keep going when sales are so poor. $12 seem to be the norm at the moment when I do get one. I wish I could roll back to this time last year.

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Always think Jan & Feb low for sales so was about normal.

March fairly good no of sales.

 

But, views and zooms down by 50%

 

Only time will tell but optimistic as my sales only come from 20% of zooms.

(Sorry that's poor grammar !)

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My pseudo containing news images is the best performing according to Alamy but very few sales come from that. However it might back up the theory that captions are more relevant as news images generally carry more information in my news image subs.

 

 

Matt: ".......you could feasibly upload a second batch from home so long as........

As with many things, it's trying to get the best use of time available. Live News images aren't searchable initially, and then when they are the caption really screws up their performance and so it's more appealing to expedite a stock upload, with a finalised version of keywords and captions, ready for the database update, and job done.

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I count 4 months now. 

My views are down to almost half.  Zooms also down the same, so CTR is not changed for me.  Overall income for 2017 down substantially.

 

I resent having to redo all my captions just to try to get back to where I was.

I can't change tags since the majority of my images are filled to double or more the tag limit.

At this point I'm hoping Alamy's supertags go the same route as quotes for phrases - long promised, never rolled out.

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I had my best month ever for sales in March and have found zooms way up.  When I check searches I almost always have at least one image on page one, sometimes more. 

 

I constantly check different searches and don't see images moving about, I am consistently in the same place so sorry Philippe, I don't think its a lottery.  That would mean images moving around a lot.  There could be a change in what different countries are seeing, so depending on what country you are in, you may find your images in different places.

 

I have put important stuff in captions, but I always have, so don't have to change much there.

 

Just having to catch those darn mega tags that appear once in awhile.

 

Jill

 

Edited to add:  I may use my VPN and see how images change based on what IP address I use.

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I count 4 months now. 

My views are down to almost half.  Zooms also down the same, so CTR is not changed for me.  Overall income for 2017 down substantially.

 

I resent having to redo all my captions just to try to get back to where I was.

I can't change tags since the majority of my images are filled to double or more the tag limit.

At this point I'm hoping Alamy's supertags go the same route as quotes for phrases - long promised, never rolled out.

 

Do you think that having so many tags might be part of the problem? Just a thought...

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Not as good as before 5/12;  - for March, overall views and CTR down by about 25%, CTR therefore unchanged but sales also down about 25% on expected.

 

Kumar (The Doc one)

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Not as good as before 5/12;  - for March, overall views and CTR down by about 25%, CTR therefore unchanged but sales also down about 25% on expected.

 

Kumar (The Doc one)

 

 

Oh dear! Sounds like the photography trips may be a bit curtailed this year. ;)

 

Allan

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I've just been enjoying an evening of opera, and in particular Sarah Brightman and Andre Bocelli singing "Time to say goodbye"

 

Gotta take the hint. Good luck folks. It's been a gas but life's too short.

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I've just been enjoying an evening of opera, and in particular Sarah Brightman and Andre Bocelli singing "Time to say goodbye"

Gotta take the hint. Good luck folks. It's been a gas but life's too short.

Yikes, ReeRay! At least leave your images up! Who knows what shakeup might happen later, and you find your suddenly on top again.

 

Betty

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