Alamy's search engine

[FOTOLINCS]

Wow, I was absolutely not expecting this from Alamy. I typed "BLACK GRASS" into the search engine and came up with the first full page with not ONE SINGLE MENTION OF BLACK GRASS.

Hell's bells, no wonder nothing happened to the pix I recently sent in!

Unless you are involved in agriculture in any way, black grass will mean nothing to you but check this out http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-23678503

Farmers are having the worst crop problems ever with black grass this year. (Yes, I did also put same images in news section).

 

It is bad enough that no black grass comes up when 'I' type it in but when an editor types it in and gets ladies draped across green GRASS, pics of green GRASS, etc etc but none of the black grass images they might have expected...

 

C'mon Alamy, you have got to sort this out PDQ.  I'm going to check what else editors can't find on Alamy now so... I may return !!

[David Davies]

Try "black grass weed", as mentioned in the BBC article, plenty of pics. on the first page!

Only "black grass" is asking for trouble.

 

 

PS. I did not give the minus point!

[FOTOLINCS]

Hi David

 

Just spoke to my editor friend about this and he said the first thing he would type in is black grass and then if nothing came up would tag other words on and weeds would have been among them.

Just looked on other pic agencies and all are pretty much like Alamy's so, have to have a re-think on my captioning.

 

Cheers for the head's up anyway.

 

Colin Smale

www.fotolincs.com

[Phil Robinson]

Try blackgrass, one word, and it brings up only the right thing - though not many images. I would hurriedly add the keywords blackgrass and black-grass, both of which seem to be used and might give you the advantage in a search. 

[FOTOLINCS]

Thanx Phil, will do.

[FOTOLINCS]

Hi again PhIl. 

 

If I were an editor (heaven forbid) I would still go 'ape' at the time wasting unwanted images that come up in Black Grass or was it black grass weed? Got a woman in a black bra, a black dog, a black bird, a black cat and I notice there is a "DOG, AMERICAN COCKER SPANIEL" in there, what's that doing there?

Maybe it's me being too picky.

[Phil Robinson]

I think as long as the customer can understand why the images come up - as long as grass and something black are visible - I think most will accept that and refine their search (adding 'weed' or the latin name - another keyword to include). What would annoy me is searches where some of the results seem totally irrelevant to the search terms. That can happen too (especially on the German site!)