Ron Emmons Posted February 14, 2018 Share Posted February 14, 2018 Am I right in thinking that in order for an image to be 'discoverable', it needs to have 10 supertags and 50 keywords? This is what I deduce from taking a few images of 'poor discoverability' and trying to make them 'discoverable'. This seems crazy to me, as it means I'm searching for progressively less relevant keywords in order to make the magic switch from orange to green, though the addition of these almost irrelevant keywords seems to add nothing to the image's discoverability to me. It's also ridiculously time-consuming. Am I alone in thinking this way? Can anyone persuade me why I should spend countless hours adding vaguely relevant tags to my images? Or should we be trying to get Alamy to re-think its criteria for discoverability? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Niels Quist Posted February 14, 2018 Share Posted February 14, 2018 Forget all about discoverability http://discussion.alamy.com/topic/9084-poor-discoverability/?tab=comments#comment-162204 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sultanpepa Posted February 14, 2018 Share Posted February 14, 2018 This is becoming a question asked almost daily by new contributors. You are correct in all your assumptions. 50 tags are rarely needed, maybe unhelpful, and may harm your Alamy search ranking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Woods Posted February 14, 2018 Share Posted February 14, 2018 I have 15800 images with Alamy. Of those 384 are green for good discovery - mostly overkeyworded older images. When I get round to rekeywording the greenies, most will drop back to orange. Discoverability, I think, is Alamy trying to be a bit trendy and social media-ish, maybe because the youngsters are lost without social media. I don't know, but certainly you will do damage to your ranking by adding irrelevant keywords just to get in the green. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Richards Posted February 14, 2018 Share Posted February 14, 2018 50 keywords for every picture is way over the top. Maximum 20 and often a lot less - unless it's a particularly remarkable image. You don't necessarily have to have 10 super tags either. Ignore trying to go green or you'll fry your brain!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wiskerke Posted February 14, 2018 Share Posted February 14, 2018 4 hours ago, Colin Woods said: I have 15800 images with Alamy. Of those 384 are green for good discovery - mostly overkeyworded older images. When I get round to rekeywording the greenies, most will drop back to orange. Discoverability, I think, is Alamy trying to be a bit trendy and social media-ish, maybe because the youngsters are lost without social media. I don't know, but certainly you will do damage to your ranking by adding irrelevant keywords just to get in the green. What if that's not true anymore? Because we don't know. Yes it used to be that keyword spamming, as it is known on the micros, drove one's ranking down. But can we be sure that's still the case? Maybe more views will just mean more views. wim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted February 14, 2018 Share Posted February 14, 2018 12 minutes ago, wiskerke said: What if that's not true anymore? Because we don't know. Yes it used to be that keyword spamming, as it is known on the micros, drove one's ranking down. But can we be sure that's still the case? Maybe more views will just mean more views. wim I think that this may well be the case. More could be the new less when it comes to keywords. Perhaps (?) this is what the new "discoverability" thing is all about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Woods Posted February 15, 2018 Share Posted February 15, 2018 I'm not so sure. I think that keyword stuffing will always be harmful because clients will only want to see images that are directly relevant to their search terms. So even if an image is put higher in search results because it is green, if the keywords aren't directly relevant than the client won't look at it. As I discussed in another thread, it took me a long time to undo the damage i did myself by irrelevant keywording and I am not ready to start over-keywording yet. Time will tell, and I have been wrong before, but I am not worrying about orange discoverability yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted February 15, 2018 Share Posted February 15, 2018 2 hours ago, Colin Woods said: I'm not so sure. I think that keyword stuffing will always be harmful because clients will only want to see images that are directly relevant to their search terms. So even if an image is put higher in search results because it is green, if the keywords aren't directly relevant than the client won't look at it. As I discussed in another thread, it took me a long time to undo the damage i did myself by irrelevant keywording and I am not ready to start over-keywording yet. Time will tell, and I have been wrong before, but I am not worrying about orange discoverability yet. Keyword-stuffing definitely doesn't sound like a good idea, but I think that coming up with as many relevant keywords as possible is a good idea these days. In my case, I've tended to be too economical with keywords (a.k.a. "tags") with a lot of my images, so I'm going back and straining my brain to find additional ones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Emmons Posted February 16, 2018 Author Share Posted February 16, 2018 Many thanks to all for these comments. You've convinced me that I shouldn't worry about 'going green' and use only keywords/tags that seem relevant to the image in question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M.Chapman Posted February 26, 2018 Share Posted February 26, 2018 On 25/02/2018 at 10:57, GS-Images said: Another tweet today from Alamy to confuse contributors regarding discoverability. How many new contributors come to the forum asking about this? It's clearly confusing, and I'd be confused too if I were new to Alamy. The wrong term is being used. What it tells people is that being "green" will lead to your images being more likely to be "discovered", which is not the case at all. It's great to have a way to flag images where the optional data has not been completed, or with only a few tags, but calling it "discoverability" and having that tag threshold so high, and keeping on pushing it on Twitter, is hurting everyone. This is not just the rant of one person, and a forum search shows that it's what just about every poster to these forums thinks. Geoff. Agreed it is confusing... For a new contributor adding, extra tags to maximise "discoverability" will, in the short term, cause their images to be viewed more often. But if the contributor includes too many obscure, irrelevant or incorrect tags (in an attempt to get a green "discoverability") then their images will frequently appear in searches that don't match what the buyer is searching for. These images won't get zoomed or sell, damaging the contributors CTR and sales per view. As a result, that contributor's Alamy rank will sink leading to fewer and fewer views. In my experience, if you're taking images of subjects that have lots of competition on Alamy, achieving and maintaining a high Alamy rank is absolutely crucial for success. It's way, way more important that getting into the green discoverability. Mark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MandyD Posted February 26, 2018 Share Posted February 26, 2018 2 hours ago, M.Chapman said: Agreed it is confusing... For a new contributor adding, extra tags to maximise "discoverability" will, in the short term, cause their images to be viewed more often. But if the contributor includes too many obscure, irrelevant or incorrect tags (in an attempt to get a green "discoverability") then their images will frequently appear in searches that don't match what the buyer is searching for. These images won't get zoomed or sell, damaging the contributors CTR and sales per view. As a result, that contributor's Alamy rank will sink leading to fewer and fewer views. In my experience, if you're taking images of subjects that have lots of competition on Alamy, achieving and maintaining a high Alamy rank is absolutely crucial for success. It's way, way more important that getting into the green discoverability. Mark As a relatively new contributor, thank you, this is very helpful Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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