CTR

[Sally]

What, actually, is the point of CTR (click through rate)? Mine is pretty low. But only 5 of my 14 sales to date were ever zoomed (and not necessarily by whoever bought the image) making it around 40%. So why does Alamy bother with this calculation, and what impact does it have?

[Reimar]

Go to the measures page and you will see this:

 

How is this data collected?

This data is collected from the search activity of our paying customers. It records searches, visits, views, sales and zooms.

How to use this page?

Use this page to identify pseudonyms that are performing well or badly relative to one another. Pseudonyms with a high click through rate (CTR) will be receiving more zooms relative to views than pseudonyms with a low CTR. This is important information because the ratio of zooms to views is one of the factors that influences your AlamyRank score.

Is CTR my AlamyRank?

No. CTR is just one of the factors that make up your AlamyRank.

What are “Your Sales”?

The total number of sales made under a pseudonym for the time period specified.

What are “Your Views”?

The number of times customers have seen your thumbnail images in search results pages.

What are “Your Zooms”?

The number of times customers have clicked on your images to see the larger zoom view.

What is “Your CTR” ?

CTR stands for “Click Through Rate” which is the number of zooms divided by the number of views, multiplied by 100.

[Southpole]

26 minutes ago, Reimar said:

Go to the measures page and you will see this:

 

How is this data collected?

This data is collected from the search activity of our paying customers. It records searches, visits, views, sales and zooms.

How to use this page?

Use this page to identify pseudonyms that are performing well or badly relative to one another. Pseudonyms with a high click through rate (CTR) will be receiving more zooms relative to views than pseudonyms with a low CTR. This is important information because the ratio of zooms to views is one of the factors that influences your AlamyRank score.

Is CTR my AlamyRank?

No. CTR is just one of the factors that make up your AlamyRank.

What are “Your Sales”?

The total number of sales made under a pseudonym for the time period specified.

What are “Your Views”?

The number of times customers have seen your thumbnail images in search results pages.

What are “Your Zooms”?

The number of times customers have clicked on your images to see the larger zoom view.

What is “Your CTR” ?

CTR stands for “Click Through Rate” which is the number of zooms divided by the number of views, multiplied by 100.

 

 

Would it be better to have zoomed images in a separate pseudonym ?

[Sally]

1 minute ago, Southpole said:

 

 

Would it be better to have zoomed images in a separate pseudonym ?

 

28 minutes ago, Reimar said:

Go to the measures page and you will see this:

 

How is this data collected?

This data is collected from the search activity of our paying customers. It records searches, visits, views, sales and zooms.

How to use this page?

Use this page to identify pseudonyms that are performing well or badly relative to one another. Pseudonyms with a high click through rate (CTR) will be receiving more zooms relative to views than pseudonyms with a low CTR. This is important information because the ratio of zooms to views is one of the factors that influences your AlamyRank score.

Is CTR my AlamyRank?

No. CTR is just one of the factors that make up your AlamyRank.

What are “Your Sales”?

The total number of sales made under a pseudonym for the time period specified.

What are “Your Views”?

The number of times customers have seen your thumbnail images in search results pages.

What are “Your Zooms”?

The number of times customers have clicked on your images to see the larger zoom view.

What is “Your CTR” ?

CTR stands for “Click Through Rate” which is the number of zooms divided by the number of views, multiplied by 100.

Yes I’ve seen all that,  but it doesn’t tell me what CTR actually does, apart from contribute to my overall rank (algorithm unknown).

I suppose my question really is why CTR is important, given that the vast majority of sales take place without zooms.

[Normspics]

I think it is only giving a measure of what the volume buyers are looking at and buying and bearing in mind the 80/20 rule might apply here, meaning that they could account for something like 80% of the business. So I take away from this that zooms and CTR are a measure of how well I’m doing appealing to Alamys  largest volume buyers. 

[pablo]

I thought that CTR was used by Alamy to determine the order of presentation of images, (i.e. on first page of a search term, as opposed to much later page where my images reside!). Or my view may be too simplistic.

Paul 

[Kukkudrill]

CTR is Alamy's incentive to photographers not to spam-tag images. Spamming brings up irrelevant images in searches, which will not get zoomed, so your CTR drops. CTR keeps down the number of irrelevant images that turn up in searches. 

[Normspics]

CTR is only for the select larger customer

[andremichel]

7 hours ago, Normspics said:

CTR is only for the select larger customer

How did you come to that conclusion?

[andremichel]

CTR is an important factor in deriving your rank which in turn affects search order and the chances a buyer will  see and buy your images.

Low CTR can occur if:

1. Bad or Spam keywording 

2. Too many similars coming up searches

3. Correctly keyworded Images that get views but fail to grab a buyers interest when compared to more accomplished or commercially minded photographers.

[Cryptoprocta]

9 hours ago, Normspics said:

CTR is only for the select larger customer

Alamy support told me it isn't only larger customers (when I wrote to them questioning a very unlikely PU sale which had  never had any interest shown in years, then was zoomed, then the same day sold as PU, on a Sunday).

[wiskerke]

2 hours ago, Cryptoprocta said:

Alamy support told me it isn't only larger customers (when I wrote to them questioning a very unlikely PU sale which had  never had any interest shown in years, then was zoomed, then the same day sold as PU, on a Sunday).

 

Probably just real customers, as in buying customers.

 

wim

 

[Michael_Jacobs]

I understand the importance of CTR. If a buyer clicks on a one or several images of a search, it means that these images work - for the buyer... Using this info Alamy can offer better search results.

 

What I'm wondering is if the buyer looks at your similar images, will it count for views and CTR?

[Normspics]

This was a quote from James Allsworth in 2013

 

- "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."

[Betty LaRue]

59 minutes ago, Normspics said:

This was a quote from James Allsworth in 2013

 

- "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."

 

59 minutes ago, Normspics said:

This was a quote from James Allsworth in 2013

 

- "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."

Thanks for that. It explains a lot. I always thought maybe a mouseover replaced the zoom, but not necessarily so. A mouseover would not register as a zoom.

For instance, I recently had a search by file number. Obviously the client had looked at it before, made a note, came back. But if he/she didn’t purchase immediately, the sale wasn’t tied to a zoom. Interesting.

Betty

[John Mitchell]

I wonder if CTR is "reset" at the beginning of each year. My graph shows CTR to be over twice what it was during the latter part of 2017, with only four zooms and one sale so far this year.

 

Dopamine and endorphin levels also up.

[Reimar]

No John, the stats in Measures are for a full year.  As always at the beginning of the month, the monthly CTR can be anywhere from 0 (for no zooms yet) to a very high (temporary) value if views are few and you get a few zooms on the first few days.  It will settle out as the month progresses. 

But keep the dopamine and endorphin levels up anyway!

[John Mitchell]

42 minutes ago, Reimar said:

No John, the stats in Measures are for a full year.  As always at the beginning of the month, the monthly CTR can be anywhere from 0 (for no zooms yet) to a very high (temporary) value if views are few and you get a few zooms on the first few days.  It will settle out as the month progresses. 

But keep the dopamine and endorphin levels up anyway!

 

That's my understanding as well. However, the high temporary value seems to be sticking around longer than usual this month. New Year's hangover, I guess. No doubt my graph will start heading south as views pick up.

[Matt Ashmore]

On 1/5/2018 at 22:48, pablo said:

I thought that CTR was used by Alamy to determine the order of presentation of images, (i.e. on first page of a search term, as opposed to much later page where my images reside!). Or my view may be too simplistic.

Paul 

On 1/6/2018 at 08:16, andremichel said:

CTR is an important factor in deriving your rank which in turn affects search order and the chances a buyer will  see and buy your images.

 

 

We don't know this for sure. My understanding is that CTR used to be important when determining rank/order of pictures in search results, but at about the time that the new AIM came in, Alamy apparently did a big overhaul of how their search engine works. After that, it is very unclear whether CTR has an actual impact on rank or if it is just a useful personal indicator of how attractive your images are to buyers. Alamy 'keep their cards close to their chest' on anything to do with how the search engine works. So while I'd imagine CTR might well still play a role in ranking, you can't categorically state one way or another as it is really just speculation.

[Reimar]

Matt, it's only speculation if you believe the guidelines I quoted above are incorrect.   Specifically: "This is important information because the ratio of zooms to views is one of the factors that influences your AlamyRank score".  No reason to think this is incorrect, in my opinion.

[Sally]

Well, having started this thread, I am not sure that I am any the wiser.  However, my CTR just shot up over the weekend. Whether that is due to an change in the algorithm ( see other thread) or the fact that I had about 800 views and 8 zooms - the most ever over a weekend, I'm not sure.

[Southpole]

22 minutes ago, Sally said:

Well, having started this thread, I am not sure that I am any the wiser.  However, my CTR just shot up over the weekend. Whether that is due to an change in the algorithm ( see other thread) or the fact that I had about 800 views and 8 zooms - the most ever over a weekend, I'm not sure.

 

 

800 views blimey 300 has been my highest 

[Sally]

34 minutes ago, Southpole said:

 

 

800 views blimey 300 has been my highest 

Sorry,  my maths failed me. It was 500. I am hoping that’s due to having spent many many hours over the last week editing old images. If so, then the time will have been well spent.

[riccarbi]

Pretty sure the most important ranking factor is images sold / total number of images