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Well!

One pseudonym with no sales and a ctr of 0.00 moves up from page 22 to 18. My proper pseudonym with an average over the last 3 months with 10 sales 49 zooms and an above average of .65 that often went over 1.00 moves from page 4 to page 22. Now that makes good sense not to bother. I have re keyworded and worked hard to increase rank and BANG a kick in the teeth.....that's me done.

I have about 2000 images to edit and upload from recent trips, there is no point. I have even contributed to live news that was published about four months ago with not a mention in stats to date.

It is not worth selling images for peanuts, seeing them spread all around the world for the scant insulting rewards that are redeemed.

 

Andy

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Well!

One pseudonym with no sales and a ctr of 0.00 moves up from page 22 to 18. My proper pseudonym with an average over the last 3 months with 10 sales 49 zooms and an above average of .65 that often went over 1.00 moves from page 4 to page 22. Now that makes good sense not to bother. I have re keyworded and worked hard to increase rank and BANG a kick in the teeth.....that's me done.

I have about 2000 images to edit and upload from recent trips, there is no point. I have even contributed to live news that was published about four months ago with not a mention in stats to date.

It is not worth selling images for peanuts, seeing them spread all around the world for the scant insulting rewards that are redeemed.

 

Andy

Or the time to focus so much on the general BHZ rank has gone. I stopped worrying and checking sincerely after a drop about a year ago. However, searching on test keywords I see a number of individual photos being in the top end - and a number of photos in the creative selection (not searching on the pseudonym, however - but I am a lot more editorial).

 

Sales is/are my only focus - unfortunately been down this month.

 

But generally you are right - the profession is doomed.

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I'm not convinced that BHZ has any relevance nowadays with all the changes now in place. I'm still selling images, most never zoomed. My conclusion, and Alamy's advice, is to keyword accurately and concisely. Forget BHZ.

 

Ken

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I'm not convinced that BHZ has any relevance nowadays with all the changes now in place.....

 

My conclusion, and Alamy's advice, is to keyword accurately and concisely. Forget BHZ.

 

Ken

(edited to keep concise)!

 

Couldn't have put it better ourselves Ken!

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I'm hoping it is something we can ignore as my main Pseudo has dropped from p7 to p14 with a better than average CTR :(

 

Kensplace - it is a keyword some people use to determine where we are ranked. Stick BHZ as an essential keyword on a rights managed image, wait a day until it hits the search engine and then see where you appear in the search results. It is supposedly an indicator of ranking. It is usually a depressing exercise!

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I may be wrong- please correct me if I am but I think Ken is referring to ranking in general rather than "BHZ".

No, you are not wrong. And that is the only measure that counts IMHO.

 

Guys, I cannot see how it is in Alamy's interest to try and game us. What is the obsession we have with disbelieving what Alamy advises? It is in Alamy's interest as well as individual contributors for Alamy to give us good advice. As contributors it's all about giving Alamy the very best we can so that Alamy can sell the very best imagery they can.

 

Sorry but I'm a bit tired of conspiracy theories. I listened to an acedamic comment many years ago hat speculated that given a conspiracy or a stuff up, pick the stuff up every time. There are very few conspiracies that are real, but stuff ups happen all the time, by one party or the other. In our case, either contributors miss the boat or the message, or Alamy makes a mistake. Both senarios are real and attributable to human nature. Just live with it.

 

Ken

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If you have more than one pseudo BHZ is a useful tool to compare the position of them relative to each other.  I use it to decide which pseudo to use for different images and even how to keyword those images.  Whatever Alamy says, it is relevant for some people.

 

Pearl

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We posted this up a while back but you should still find this useful if you missed it. Addresses lots of questions about the ranking system and (*insert overly dramatic music here* 'dum dum durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrm') BHZ.

 

--------------------

 

Apologies for the confusion / mystery surrounding 'AlamyRank' - truth is, it's a very complex algorithm and not a simple forumla - also, because we need to make tweaks and improvements to the search functionality as time goes on, there is a certain amount of fluidity to the precise workings of it all. CTR, Sales history, Keyword placement (essential, main, comp) and keyword proximity (where words appear within the search box) also come into it as one big mix that gives your images a 'score' which is then fed into the search results. This all happens in fractions of a second to return images in what is probably the fastest stock image search engine in the world. 

Put simply though, the only tactic you can employ is to submit your best work and keyword it thoroughly with a high degree of relevancy.

Thinking specifically about CTR then. CTR (Click Through Rate) does have an impact on your ranking (as part of the big mix mentioned above), and we give you the average figure across all of Alamy so you can see how your images are performing compared to your competition.  If your images are seen many times in search results but never clicked on, this will have a negative effect on your rank and vice-versa. The search engine will also mix some results around to give everyone a fair chance, particularly if you are just starting out and have the median rank. Sales and the sales value have positive effect on your rank, so the more sales you make and the higher the value those sales are contribute significantly.

We are also doing lots of work behind the scenes on the search results:

http://www.alamy.com/Blog/contributor/archive/2012/10/19/5164.aspx

Further info here:

http://www.alamy.com/Blog/contributor/archive/2012/10/29/5241.aspx

...and this is all yielding positive results for our customers:

http://www.alamy.com/Blog/contributor/archive/2012/12/20/5288.aspx

So hopefully this clarifies things a little for you. In  a nutshell - CTR is important, but so are sales, keyword relevancy, Keyword proximity and all the workings the content team are doing behind the scenes on developing the search results.

Oh, and a couple more points for you that will hopefully be useful!

- "I had a sale but no zoom"

We can only match up a zoom to a sale if the customer completes this in one go, eg, search, zoom, buy. Quite often the customer will search and then come back later to buy, so we can't match these two up. Also, sometimes the picture researcher who finds the images, then passes them over to another account for purchasing, again, we can't match these two up as related.

- Play the "BHZ" game

Our advice on this? Don't bother. It only tells you how well you are doing compared to everyone else playing the BHZ game and it is very inconsistent because some people have multiple images in there, some have BHZ in the caption only, some in the essential keyword field, some only in the comprehensive field etc etc. Combine that with the 'big mix' (above) of elements that determine the ranking, you can quickly see that your BHZ placement is going to tell you virtually nothing. The better way to see how you are performing is to keep an eye on some real searches and see where you are coming up within those results.

Finally, in terms of frequency of updating the ranks, it's not set in stone but it works out that roughly every 100 days we will update the results using the previous 300 days data.

 

------------------------

Hope that helps!

James Allsworth
Content Executive
Alamy

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Of course, bearing in mind Alamys post, my main pseud moved from page 8 to mid page 5.

 

Important bits. CTR for 3 of my pseudonyms sits between .6 - 1.1 while one lingers around average and a couple of others sit lower down at 0.1 - 0.3.

 

Zooms increased to about 30 for the last couple of months (for a rolling 30 days) touching 36 on occasions.

 

Couple of nice size sales this month so all in all, quite happy with the progress of my first 12 months. Started out with less than 100 images may/june 2012 so it was a little slow to begin with but since Nov sales have been coming through with more consistency, low in numbers but improving. I think June was the only month without any. Hopefully this continues and with the 2k images I'm working through now it will get better..... *touching wood*

 

Feeling relatively positive, just got to knuckle down and keep going for it. Most importantly, I'm really enjoying my photography!

 

 

Edit...

 

Oh, and Alamy, please feel free to add a couple more sales by close of business  ;)

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I find the BHZ game very worthwhile. Of course it is an imperfect measure and there are all sorts of anomalies and inconsistencies in the process. That said  it provides a relatively consistent measure as to how your pseudos are performing compared to this sample.

 

In my case my pseudos have slipped a bit and this has prompted me to clear out some of the older images that are not performing. Have moved about 200 images out which hopefully will improve things next time round.

 

I have one pseudo on page 1, 2 on page 5 and 1 on page 6.

 

Bit like my old school reports, should do better!

 

dov

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In addition to the complex algorithms  (and don't they love those) James quote "The search engine will also mix some results around to give everyone a fair chance, particularly if you are just starting out and have the median rank."  so how do you guys compensate for a weird extra allowance for new contributors with median ranking given in the interest of fairness ?

 

I genuinely accept that the best way of improving your ranking is give them good sellable images and keyword them tightly - quoting to yourself what the buyer would key in - in just two or three words - to find their image - then put those words into the essential field in that order - after that do what you want with the other fields but remember that the more miss-hits you create the harder the hit on your Alamy Algorithmic Activity and the harder the smack on your wrist for inaccurate keywording.

 

I've got 5,000 images in, average 30 sales a month and am quite happy with where I see my images in searches - have never BHZ'd .  Keywording is NOT complicated - just put yourself in a picture researcher's shoes.......

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I find the BHZ game very worthwhile. Of course it is an imperfect measure and there are all sorts of anomalies and inconsistencies in the process. That said  it provides a relatively consistent measure as to how your pseudos are performing compared to this sample.

 

dov

I got a red point for saying much the same thing.  It seems rather sad when you can't have a harmless opinion without getting penalised. Fortunately someone neutralised it with a green one. 

 

Sorry to go off topic.

 

Pearl

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