Russell Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 We all seek to structure our captions and keywords to ensure that they are relevant to the customer and to maximise our CTR. But sometimes the search engine is not helping. Yesterday I noticed a view on "saint peter sculpture". But my image was not of Saint Peter. It was of a sculpture (in keywords and captions) and in was in a church (Saint Mary in keywords St. Mary in captions) by Peter Eugene Ball (in both keywords and captions). I can see how the search engine found "sculpture" from the keywords, Peter from the caption (although it was part of a compound term in the keywords) and Saint from another compound term in the keywords. Should the search engine not select individual words from compound terms in keywords? Is there a way to identify compound terms in the caption? Any thoughts? Russell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 Supposedly your image should have been further down search results that one tagged "saint peter scuplture" but there's no way to find out how it ranked and of course you can't stop a buyer scrolling through page after page. Certainly there's no way to prevent it but I have a suspicion, and it's not much more than that, that I get fewer spammy searches than I used to and that they are caused by words in the caption and not by tags. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Russell Posted January 2, 2018 Author Share Posted January 2, 2018 I just had a look. My image pops up as 51 of 6714. I am of course grateful for its prominence, but it really shouldn't be there! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 Hmm. That's unsatisfactory. Perhaps a note to MS to ask them to turn the volume down a bit. I wonder if your (I assume) high rank is working against the tag effect. However I've had sales from spammy searches so who knows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avpics Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 I've never been above 35,000 feet but one time had a huge number of views for 'World from space' having a large number of World-prefixed events with 'space for copy' in my portfolio. Also, I've many hundreds of images from large events such as the Goodwood Revival and Festival of Speed for which it makes sense to include those phrases as tags. My measures are currently showing 482 views in two sessions in December with just two zooms for the search term Goodwood Revival, with ten zooms in total for Alamy (no sales showing in the figures). I haven't done anything wrong, so what do you do? Take the rough with the smooth I guess, in that I have sold a number of images from those events. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jill Morgan Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 I look at it this way, it happens to everyone, so evens out the playing field. Jill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vpics Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 Maybe it's better to put "St Mary" or "St Peter" into a single tag. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cryptoprocta Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 32 minutes ago, vpics said: Maybe it's better to put "St Mary" or "St Peter" into a single tag. Yes, but it won't stop "St Mary" and "St Peter" causing a hit on a search for a hypothetical Mary Peter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Russell Posted January 2, 2018 Author Share Posted January 2, 2018 1 hour ago, vpics said: Maybe it's better to put "St Mary" or "St Peter" into a single tag. "St. Mary" was, but "St. Peter" was not as the image had nothing to do with St. Peter - it's just that the sculptors first name was Peter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Russell Posted January 2, 2018 Author Share Posted January 2, 2018 2 hours ago, Jill Morgan said: I look at it this way, it happens to everyone, so evens out the playing field. Jill I understand your point Jill, thanks. But as an IT guy for over 40 years, I though the Alamy developers might be interested in the feedback and perhaps consider how they might improve the algotithm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cryptoprocta Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 1 hour ago, Russell said: I understand your point Jill, thanks. But as an IT guy for over 40 years, I though the Alamy developers might be interested in the feedback and perhaps consider how they might improve the algotithm. I've been banging on about files keyworded "Joe Bloggs" and "Jane Doe" giving hits for searches on Joe Doe, Jane Bloggs and Doe Bloggs, often trumping actual photos of Joe Doe etc, ever since I started here, with no interest being shown. I can only imagine that, to my astonishment, buyers aren't complaining about it. It would annoy me intensely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 Can't say I get bothered about this, my CTR is generally dreadful (with the odd extraordinary peak!), but the sales continue to come in. Of course I try to avoid irrelevant tags but inevitably these things occur. Sometimes it is to our benefit as a customer searches for something that we had not thought of, but an image suits the purpose. Better to allow the search engine free rein, in my view, and perhaps contrary to popular opinion, more is indeed more as far as keywords are concerned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted January 3, 2018 Share Posted January 3, 2018 The point's well made, though- to tag carefully and then come up in the first 1% without a relevant tag is a bit annoying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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