Old images and search results

[John Mitchell]

Do older images -- ones with Alamy ID's beginning with A, B or C -- tend to come up later in your search results?

 

I notice this quite often when I have a subject with a mixture of newer and older images. The newer ones are higher up in search results, sometimes a couple of pages ahead of older ones.

 

Ironically, a lot of my A, B and C images continue to be bestsellers.

 

 

[NYCat]

Yes, this drives me crazy as sometimes I think the older ones are more suitable to someone searching the subject. It makes me sometimes reluctant to add more of subjects where I have good visibility. I just added some to the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage of a little injured calf but I think my earlier ones of babies being fed, etc. are going to be the ones people are looking for. The injured calf would be important for someone doing a longer article on elephant poaching and I don't know how to get those new ones further down in a general search for the place. There is probably a way with the caption and keywords but tricky and I sure wish we had some power over which images show up earliest.

 

Paulette

[vpics]

I sold one of my very old ones this month AA294E. 

 

[John Mitchell]

22 minutes ago, NYCat said:

Yes, this drives me crazy as sometimes I think the older ones are more suitable to someone searching the subject. It makes me sometimes reluctant to add more of subjects where I have good visibility. I just added some to the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage of a little injured calf but I think my earlier ones of babies being fed, etc. are going to be the ones people are looking for. The injured calf would be important for someone doing a longer article on elephant poaching and I don't know how to get those new ones further down in a general search for the place. There is probably a way with the caption and keywords but tricky and I sure wish we had some power over which images show up earliest.

 

Paulette

 

I wonder why this is the case. Even "supertagging" old images doesn't seem to alter their position in search results. Or does it?

 

That said, out of 12 sales so far this month, I have three A's, four B's, and two C's. Oldies but goodies...

[imageplotter]

I have similar issues. My phrases used to be in brackets rather than commas or quotation marks. It was one of the suggested options for phrasing in the old IM, and worked just fine in the old IM. Unfortunately, I used those brackets consistently across several thousand images. Wish I'd used one of the other suggested methods instead, as these were preserved, whereas all my bracketed phrases were scattered in the new IM, leaving me with similar nonsensical random combinations, and lots of duplicates. Feels like I am being punished for it now, which isn't quite fair. So I'm having to re-keyword all of them, time-consuming. It has also now thrown some of those words from previous phrases completely out of context, plus, because those previous phrases are now counted as individual words, it leaves many of the images with 50+ keywords. When I'm making changes to those, I now have to change each image individually, because the 50+ keywords mean I cannot add phrases to them in batches, since I have to delete sufficient numbers of keywords first to get far below 50 (but because each picture in a batch is different, with ie an overall theme or location, I cannot simply batch delete many of those keywords. And it will affect CTR, because the jumbling up of former phrases now means the image turns up in all the wrong searches. 

 

To add to the frustration, I can barely read those keywords (as noted by many others previously) because those gray boxes are tiny and so difficult to see. Getting more frustrated with this every day. I've spent days and days just trying to fix these issues, despite having followed their recommendations in the old IM. Days that I could be out, shooting. 

 

I totally understand that Alamy are still working hard on many of the aspects discussed here on a daily basis and have got a lot on their plate with this, but changing the coding for ie. those keyword boxes surely is not as complex to resolve and implement as many of our other issues? 

[M.Chapman]

13 hours ago, NYCat said:

I sure wish we had some power over which images show up earliest.

 

Paulette

+1

[Pearl]

13 hours ago, NYCat said:

Yes, this drives me crazy as sometimes I think the older ones are more suitable to someone searching the subject. It makes me sometimes reluctant to add more of subjects where I have good visibility. I just added some to the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage of a little injured calf but I think my earlier ones of babies being fed, etc. are going to be the ones people are looking for. The injured calf would be important for someone doing a longer article on elephant poaching and I don't know how to get those new ones further down in a general search for the place. There is probably a way with the caption and keywords but tricky and I sure wish we had some power over which images show up earliest.

 

Paulette

I used to use a lower ranked pseudo to solve this problem but now that Alamy seem to have altered the way our pseudos work together, doing this may have a derogatory effect by pushing the earlier images even further back.  I haven't tested this yet so it's just a suspicion.

 

Pearl

[Inchiquin]

14 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

Do older images -- ones with Alamy ID's beginning with A, B or C -- tend to come up later in your search results?

 

I notice this quite often when I have a subject with a mixture of newer and older images. The newer ones are higher up in search results, sometimes a couple of pages ahead of older ones.

 

 

This was always the case. I don't know if things have changed since the recent overhaul to the search engine, but newer (i.e. more recently on sale) images invariably had priority over older ones. It was the way the system worked. This is why, when I uploaded a batch, I would keyword the best ones last to ensure they came up first.

 

Alan

 

[NYCat]

I guess I should try to do uploads in batches for the same subject. That doesn't work, of course, when I have taken them over years. My tendency has always been to try to quickly put up my best images from a trip and then add others later when I have time. It pushes the best ones down in the results. It has indeed always been the case and I've always had problems with the issue. I haven't tested lately whether they go in the order of being keyworded. Also, of course, if you keyword in batches they would presumably go in the order you had them when uploading. Maybe? Would you have to upload one at a time? Mine sort themselves in a folder by the file name. Too many questions. So frustrating.

 

Paulette

[Allan Bell]

 

My latest sale (as known by myself) is one of the "B" bunch.

 

Allan

 

 

[Inchiquin]

55 minutes ago, NYCat said:

if you keyword in batches they would presumably go in the order you had them when uploading.

 

 

 

That was not the case previously. They would go in the reverse order in which they went on sale, i.e. if you keyworded two similar images in the same batch consecutively, the second one would come up first. As I said, I don't know if this is still the case with the new search engine as I haven't completed any keywording since it was introduced.

 

Alan

[wiskerke]

3 hours ago, imageplotter said:

I have similar issues. My phrases used to be in brackets rather than commas or quotation marks. It was one of the suggested options for phrasing in the old IM, and worked just fine in the old IM. Unfortunately, I used those brackets consistently across several thousand images. Wish I'd used one of the other suggested methods instead, as these were preserved, whereas all my bracketed phrases were scattered in the new IM, leaving me with similar nonsensical random combinations, and lots of duplicates. Feels like I am being punished for it now, which isn't quite fair. So I'm having to re-keyword all of them, time-consuming. It has also now thrown some of those words from previous phrases completely out of context, plus, because those previous phrases are now counted as individual words, it leaves many of the images with 50+ keywords. When I'm making changes to those, I now have to change each image individually, because the 50+ keywords mean I cannot add phrases to them in batches, since I have to delete sufficient numbers of keywords first to get far below 50 (but because each picture in a batch is different, with ie an overall theme or location, I cannot simply batch delete many of those keywords. And it will affect CTR, because the jumbling up of former phrases now means the image turns up in all the wrong searches. 

 

To add to the frustration, I can barely read those keywords (as noted by many others previously) because those gray boxes are tiny and so difficult to see. Getting more frustrated with this every day. I've spent days and days just trying to fix these issues, despite having followed their recommendations in the old IM. Days that I could be out, shooting. 

 

I totally understand that Alamy are still working hard on many of the aspects discussed here on a daily basis and have got a lot on their plate with this, but changing the coding for ie. those keyword boxes surely is not as complex to resolve and implement as many of our other issues? 

 

Maybe just ask Member Services for the spreadsheet option?

Afaik the new spreadsheet is available now.

 

wim

[imageplotter]

1 hour ago, wiskerke said:

 

Maybe just ask Member Services for the spreadsheet option?

Afaik the new spreadsheet is available now.

 

wim

 

Hi Wim,

What's the spreadsheet option? Haven't previously seen it, so keen to understand what it adds/what it is? Many thanks for any info, much appreciated!

 

[wiskerke]

39 minutes ago, imageplotter said:

 

Hi Wim,

What's the spreadsheet option? Haven't previously seen it, so keen to understand what it adds/what it is? Many thanks for any info, much appreciated!

 

 

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/faqs/captioning-and-keywording/

 

It's for agencies and contributors with large collections. You have to ask for it and use Alamy's format.

It has taken a while after the new AIM to set up a new one, but the old one still seemed to work for agencies.

 

wim

 

edit: I do not use it, so cannot be of further help on this.

I do however think the UX of the Image Manager 1.0 was far better than version 2.X. Which in turn was better than the current one. Which is a botched telephone app, which seems to work on some iPads, but not on telephones and not on my Android tablet.

(And probably made some people drive very nice cars. Here they're usually Audi's - not sure about the UK.)

[Doc]

5 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

+1

+1

[M.Chapman]

3 hours ago, wiskerke said:

 

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/faqs/captioning-and-keywording/

 

It's for agencies and contributors with large collections. You have to ask for it and use Alamy's format.

It has taken a while after the new AIM to set up a new one, but the old one still seemed to work for agencies.

 

wim

 

edit: I do not use it, so cannot be of further help on this.

I do however think the UX of the Image Manager 1.0 was far better than version 2.X. Which in turn was better than the current one. Which is a botched telephone app, which seems to work on some iPads, but not on telephones and not on my Android tablet.

(And probably made some people drive very nice cars. Here they're usually Audi's - not sure about the UK.)

 

Alamy have just supplied me with a spreadsheet of all my Metadata which contains the new tag and supertag columns (and all the other entries). So it's clear they can export data from the new system. I'm not sure whether they can import it back after editing yet though. They certainly could with the previous system as that's how I quickly sorted the problems with my keywords using an Excel VBA routine to add a comma between all my keywords (except where I had phrases in quotes) so they transferred over to the new system OK.

[imageplotter]

8 hours ago, wiskerke said:

 

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/faqs/captioning-and-keywording/

 

It's for agencies and contributors with large collections. You have to ask for it and use Alamy's format.

It has taken a while after the new AIM to set up a new one, but the old one still seemed to work for agencies.

 

wim

 

edit: I do not use it, so cannot be of further help on this.

I do however think the UX of the Image Manager 1.0 was far better than version 2.X. Which in turn was better than the current one. Which is a botched telephone app, which seems to work on some iPads, but not on telephones and not on my Android tablet.

(And probably made some people drive very nice cars. Here they're usually Audi's - not sure about the UK.)

Many thanks Wim!

[M.Chapman]

18 hours ago, wiskerke said:

 

I do however think the UX of the Image Manager 1.0 was far better than version 2.X. Which in turn was better than the current one. Which is a botched telephone app, which seems to work on some iPads, but not on telephones and not on my Android tablet.

 

That's progress for you...

[Allan Bell]

2 hours ago, geogphotos said:

I prefer that newer images come higher than older ones. It seems eminently sensible that buyers see new work first rather than ones from 15 years ago ( in my case).

 

It's also less embarrassing!

 

If they are being purchased I don't mind being embarrassed.

 

Allan

 

 

[Marianne]

Slightly more than 50% of my sales in from the past year are A B and C images. 40% of them have sold one or more times before. Many are of places I have returned to and taken new images. 

 

In one instance I searched by location and most of my new ones from return trips in the fall of 2015 and late summer 2016, uploaded shortly after those trips, landed on page one, while I couldn't find the one that sold most recently, which I shot in 2006 (and uploaded in 2008 or 2009) after several pages (I didn't search all 16). When I did a more specific search, it landed at the bottom of page one, after all my new ones that fit the same more narrow parameters (but there were only 2 pages of results at that point). 

 

Interestingly, for another location with images from 2010 that keep selling regularly, nearly all of those that I uploaded right after the trip show up on page 1 (out of 7) but a few that I went back and processed and uploaded over a year later landed on page 2. The images sold in that case were all on the page 1 search. I have not returned to that location, accessible only by boat or small airplane, so I'm glad those oldies are holding their position. 

 

Annoyingly, I found a lot of images with the location tagged which were actually taken elsewhere. I wish there was some way to report these kinds of errors. 

 

I'm glad that the internet doesn't required huge files, since I really like some of the stuff I shot with my old Nikon D-70 and kit lens (of course back in 2008-2009 we had to uprez those 6MP files to 48MB). 

[John Mitchell]

1 hour ago, Marianne said:

 

I'm glad that the internet doesn't required huge files, since I really like some of the stuff I shot with my old Nikon D-70 and kit lens (of course back in 2008-2009 we had to uprez those 6MP files to 48MB). 

 

I have a lot of images were that up-sized to 48MB from a Sony a100 10MP camera with Tamron and Minolta lenses. They continue to sell well. The "uprezing" doesn't seem to have been an issue.

[Marianne]

On 6/21/2017 at 23:15, John Mitchell said:

 

I have a lot of images were that up-sized to 48MB from a Sony a100 10MP camera with Tamron and Minolta lenses. They continue to sell well. The "uprezing" doesn't seem to have been an issue.

 

Agreed - those files had to be super-sharp. And I'm sure the large size probably helps them to keep selling, when I think of it. But it also makes me think I should upload those files that were sharp at their original size, but not sufficiently so at (4x?) their size. 

[John Mitchell]

4 hours ago, Marianne said:

 

Agreed - those files had to be super-sharp. And I'm sure the large size probably helps them to keep selling, when I think of it. But it also makes me think I should upload those files that were sharp at their original size, but not sufficiently so at (4x?) their size. 

 

I wouldn't say that mine were super-sharp. QC was a bit different back then. They probably took the resulting loss in sharpness due to uprezing into account when checking images. Also, I think that the bigger pixels on those older sensors may have produced images that reacted better to upsizing. Most of my usages are small editorial ones, so I'm not sure that the larger file size was or continues to be a selling point. But who knows. I was glad when Alamy dropped the unnecessary upsizing requirement.

[John Mitchell]

53 minutes ago, GS-Images said:

There's always more to learn though. I am hoping to soon teach myself to remember to take the lens cap off every time I use my camera - But it may be a few more years before I manage to master that skill.

 

A bit off-topic, I know. Sorry, I'll go now. 

 

Geoff.

 

I've found that switching to a transparent lens cap has helped me a lot with that problem. 

[spacecadet]

I hesitated to look at some of the old stuff (2009) because I though it might make my eyes bleed, but it's pretty decent, most of it, even in jpeg. But then, I started at 14MP.

As always it's the high ISO stuff that's wretched by comparison. But it still got through.

One thing- I think Alamy got much fussier about CA from about 2012. Perhaps it's because the tools to deal with it got so much better.