How to improve discoverability of a photograph

[JBross]

I am trying to annotate and tag my first images on Alamy. I am new to this particular process so I have created a couple of screen shots to help explain my question.

 

1 - First is a picture of Olmsted Point, Yosemite NP

 

2 - Second are the Mandatory fields completed

 

3 - Lastly are the optional fields completed

 

Here is the web link to a temporary page on my website: http://jbrish.com/temp-3/

 

My discoverability is stil in the orange and not optimal (as far as I can tell) yet I don't really understand what more I could add to improve the listing. What would you suggest should be added?

 

Thank you for your time and consideration. I am still learning the system and appreciate all help.

 

 

[Rick Lewis]

I'm really not the person to advise on tags etc, but I can tell you to pretty much ignore the orange vs. green color coding on your images.  It means virtually nothing as far as getting your images seen.  

 

Do a Forum search for tags, super tags etc and see if that can help you.  Others will undoubtedly chime in with good suggestions.  People here are very helpful.

 

Rick

Edited December 6, 2017 by Rick Lewis
spelling

[MariaJ]

Hi JBross,

The consensus here seems to be that you don't necessarily need to get out of the orange to have your images discoverable. 

 

If you keep adding keywords, it will eventually turn green from orange, but if those keywords aren't very relevant, your image will show up in searches that are also not relevant and you will get views but no zooms, which hurts your ranking, which makes your image LESS discoverable.  It's best to just give the correct and relevant keywords and not worry about getting out of the orange.

 

 

Maria

[JBross]

Maria, Thank you for you answer. How can you tell if a photo has a "zoom?"

 

[ J. Ross ]

[Betty LaRue]

Top of the page:

 

My Alamy>My Dashboard>Alamy Measures>Your Images

That’s where you’ll see your zooms if/when you have some. 

 

But don’t expect any until you upload a few hundred images. Alamy is another world away from microstock. There is usually no instant gratification. 

Meanwhile glean everything you can from the forum threads. Good luck!

Betty

[losdemas]

7 hours ago, JBross said:

I am trying to annotate and tag my first images on Alamy. I am new to this particular process so I have created a couple of screen shots to help explain my question.

 

1 - First is a picture of Olmsted Point, Yosemite NP

 

2 - Second are the Mandatory fields completed

 

3 - Lastly are the optional fields completed

 

Here is the web link to a temporary page on my website: http://jbrish.com/temp-3/

 

My discoverability is stil in the orange and not optimal (as far as I can tell) yet I don't really understand what more I could add to improve the listing. What would you suggest should be added?

 

Thank you for your time and consideration. I am still learning the system and appreciate all help.

 

 

This post tells you what Alamy say: http://discussion.alamy.com/topic/7049-discoverability-stars-and-keywords/?do=findComment&comment=120993

 

[efk11]

As a former software engineer, I've tested this a fair pit ..out of pure geekdom!! 

 

I mean moving images into the green, and yes in my opinion there is something to it.

I've moved images from being unable to find at all in a search of hundreds of pages up to page 1, 2, 3

but 75% of my images continue to remain in the yellow as I agree about spamming etc  

 

But I check my pseudonyms from "yesterday" daily  and push up any images that didn't return in the search

of the same topic.

 

I've also found advice from Betty here very usual to improving my views and the 'combined keywords' again advised

here appears to be very effective.

 

Elaine

 

 

 

 

[efk11]

oh and forgot to mention the CAPTION, is probably most important in my experience of improving discoverability!

[Inchiquin]

50 minutes ago, efk11 said:

As a former software engineer, I've tested this a fair pit ..out of pure geekdom!! 

 

I mean moving images into the green, and yes in my opinion there is something to it.

I've moved images from being unable to find at all in a search of hundreds of pages up to page 1, 2, 3

 

 

Can you elaborate on this? As far as I understand, to move an image into the green zone it needs to have 50 keywords. If you have, say, 30 relevant keywords you would need to add another 20 irrelevant keywords. The only logical situation in which the image would move up the search result would be if you search on the irrelevant words, which is pointless.

 

Are you saying that adding irrelevant keywords pushes searches for the relevant ones, which were already there, higher up the list? If so, that's bonkers.

 

Alan

[Cryptoprocta]

FI, 45 keywords make the line turn green, but I agree that one should not add irrelevant keywords.

[Colblimp]

In my experience it takes 40 tags AND 10 supertags to make the line go green.  That is if you've all the optional fields filled.

[Cryptoprocta]

19 minutes ago, Colblimp said:

In my experience it takes 40 tags AND 10 supertags to make the line go green.  That is if you've all the optional fields filled.

Yes, after I'd written that I saw one with 42 tags had gone green, but I couldn't get logged in to correct my post!

[Cryptoprocta]

2 hours ago, geogphotos said:

Elaine,

 

Are you saying that a Green image will get a boost in searches over an Orange one?

 

eg) if I add extra keywords to an image so that it turns Green once will that image then appear higher in searches simply because of its new Green status?

Not necessarily. Maybe coincidentally.

As it happens, I uploaded several Strasbourg pics earlier in the year, only one of which is 'green', by dint of my having researched a lot of relevant architectural terms.

Anyway, I just searched Strasbourg, and my 'green' file has been trumped by many 'orange' files, by me and by others (viz some of the others I looked at had fewer than 20 keywords).

 

However, the image is more 'discoverable' in the sense that if someone happens to search on these specific architectural terms, they'll see my pic in the mix, which they wouldn't have if I hadn't researched and keyworded them.

Edited December 6, 2017 by Cryptoprocta

[efk11]

4 hours ago, geogphotos said:

Elaine,

 

Are you saying that a Green image will get a boost in searches over an Orange one?

 

eg) if I add extra keywords to an image so that it turns Green once will that image then appear higher in searches simply because of its new Green status?

yes imo there are most likely a few algorithms at play including activity on Alamy & ranking (as this is how tes.com works also, i sell worksheets there too)

 

By moving images to green (especially niche images, i mean ones that return a few thousand images)

For example a pseudonym of "first communion" returned only one of my 10 images in the views, so I checked the others updated them to green (yes as Colblimp says its 41ish and 10 superstars), and now they return in the views and are also in the first few pages of 30+ pages)

 

This is my experience. Sometimes there appears to be a time lag, like it might take a few days to take effect. 

[efk11]

4 hours ago, Inchiquin said:

 

Can you elaborate on this? As far as I understand, to move an image into the green zone it needs to have 50 keywords. If you have, say, 30 relevant keywords you would need to add another 20 irrelevant keywords. The only logical situation in which the image would move up the search result would be if you search on the irrelevant words, which is pointless.

 

Are you saying that adding irrelevant keywords pushes searches for the relevant ones, which were already there, higher up the list? If so, that's bonkers.

 

Alan

Gosh no, I would not add irrelevant keywords, I add combined words and certainly appropriate words that might be entered in a search. 

[efk11]

3 hours ago, Cryptoprocta said:

Not necessarily. Maybe coincidentally.

As it happens, I uploaded several Strasbourg pics earlier in the year, only one of which is 'green', by dint of my having researched a lot of relevant architectural terms.

Anyway, I just searched Strasbourg, and my 'green' file has been trumped by many 'orange' files, by me and by others (viz some of the others I looked at had fewer than 20 keywords).

 

However, the image is more 'discoverable' in the sense that if someone happens to search on these specific architectural terms, they'll see my pic in the mix, which they wouldn't have if I hadn't researched and keyworded them.

It's most likely not a random algorithm so its using some sort of combination of criterium, which Ive been playing around with just. Im not saying its fact just that, changing images to green has proved effective for me in improving views on niche pseudonyms. 

[Betty LaRue]

If you cover all the possibles of location in images where you use location, it can help you with tag numbers.

I use:

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, US, USA, U.S., U.S.A., United States, North America 

There!  I have 8 tags, none are spam.

I might, but usually don’t, use America, American. But if you are one tag away from green, I use one of those. (If I think of it, )

Also, don’t forget your plurals: flower, flowers, rose, roses, dog, dogs, person, persons, people, etc.

Sometimes I’m within one or two tags of being in the green and have no relevant tags to add.  I grind my teeth, and leave the image in the orange. My teeth don’t appreciate it.

Betty

 

[Inchiquin]

20 hours ago, efk11 said:

Gosh no, I would not add irrelevant keywords, I add combined words and certainly appropriate words that might be entered in a search. 

 

OK, but I'm still not entirely clear. Are you saying that after adding new keywords, a search for the same words as before gets a better result? If so, this is a very important piece of information because it means that all those of us who have said discoverability is irrelevant are wrong.

 

For example: an image includes the keyword 'london'. A search for 'london' brings up that image at position x. You add a few extra keywords to turn the discoverability to green, search for 'london' again, and now the image comes higher up than x. Is this what you are finding? If so, that's highly significant.

 

Alan

 

[efk11]

Obviously I can't answer definitively on this without knowing the exact algorithm and I would love to know who said discoverability is irrelevant

and with what authority. I don't agree.

 

yes I am finding that by moving images in a topic to green, it appears I get pushed up in the rankings as a whole for that topic.

(I'm the one who had only sold 5 pictures in 2 years until recently when I made changes)

 

I obviously went back and fixed lots of legacy photos (hence my feeling of regular activity on Alamy being a possible factor also, uploading often etc) 

but as an example, there are 89 pages for "ring of kerry", I was unable to find ANY of my photos at all previously (go fed turning pages!) but when I changed some to green (for this pseudonym), I just searched and see them starting on page 4 (usually green first, but an orange may be on the same page)

 

I have done this with many pseudonyms! And I now expect to see my images in the first 5 pages. For pseudonyms such as 'children playing' which returns 259,948 images, i obviously don't bother going looking for my images :-) so only possible to test with more niche subjects.

 

Elaine

 

 

 

[losdemas]

43 minutes ago, efk11 said:

Obviously I can't answer definitively on this without knowing the exact algorithm and I would love to know who said discoverability is irrelevant

and with what authority. I don't agree.

 

yes I am finding that by moving images in a topic to green, it appears I get pushed up in the rankings as a whole for that topic.

(I'm the one who had only sold 5 pictures in 2 years until recently when I made changes)

 

I obviously went back and fixed lots of legacy photos (hence my feeling of regular activity on Alamy being a possible factor also, uploading often etc) 

but as an example, there are 89 pages for "ring of kerry", I was unable to find ANY of my photos at all previously (go fed turning pages!) but when I changed some to green (for this pseudonym), I just searched and see them starting on page 4 (usually green first, but an orange may be on the same page)

 

I have done this with many pseudonyms! And I now expect to see my images in the first 5 pages. For pseudonyms such as 'children playing' which returns 259,948 images, i obviously don't bother going looking for my images :-) so only possible to test with more niche subjects.

 

Elaine

 

 

 

 

Is it because it's coming up to Christmas, that I keep reading your forum name as 'elf'?  

 

I'm not doubting your reasoning, just throwing in another possibility: could the recent 're-rank' (algorithm tweaking, whatever) be having more of an effect than your own hard work and efforts? I've done a little tweaking recently, but nothing to justify my leap in search results positioning. At present (and long may it last!), I find my images consistently high in results using a range of terms. I tend to put this down to Alamy's adjustments, rather than my own efforts. Then again, I could be wrong - it won't be the first time! 

[efk11]

1 hour ago, losdemas said:

 

Is it because it's coming up to Christmas, that I keep reading your forum name as 'elf'?  

 

I'm not doubting your reasoning, just throwing in another possibility: could the recent 're-rank' (algorithm tweaking, whatever) be having more of an effect than your own hard work and efforts? I've done a little tweaking recently, but nothing to justify my leap in search results positioning. At present (and long may it last!), I find my images consistently high in results using a range of terms. I tend to put this down to Alamy's adjustments, rather than my own efforts. Then again, I could be wrong - it won't be the first time! 

hah love that movie! Yes i hear re Alamys adjustments but and its possible directly after the adjustment perhaps but not now, they actively move to a much improved position when I make changes!

[efk11]

woops,,

hah love that movie! Yes i hear you re Alamys adjustments and it was possible directly after the adjustment perhaps but not now i dont think,

they promptly move to a much improved position when I make keyword changes!

 

[Jill Morgan]

I still don't think discoverability has much of an affect if any.

 

I sold an image this week that has 11 tags.  There are 7 pages for the search term and mine is on page one, fourth row.  Surely if we are going by discoverability, then it should have been on page 6 or 7.  I'd like to think my rank has more to do with it than discoverability.  Maybe within our own images, discoverability may play a factor.  If I had two images for this searc

 

Jill

[Inchiquin]

19 hours ago, efk11 said:

I would love to know who said discoverability is irrelevant and with what authority. I don't agree.

 

 

We all said it! It was based on the observation that the way to achieve green discoverability was simply to add more tags (which in many cases would be irrelevant tags). If it now transpires that image ranking as a whole is dependent on discoverability then we were all wrong.

 

Alan

[spacecadet]

20 hours ago, efk11 said:

Obviously I can't answer definitively on this without knowing the exact algorithm and I would love to know who said discoverability is irrelevant

and with what authority. I don't agree.

From AIM instruction manual

 

"The discoverability bar is not in any way 'reading' or 'scoring' the quality of your metadata, it simply increases with the volume of searchable information you enter".

 

Is that authoritative enough for you?