With BigStock when someone searches using a keyword and the word is in the title, description, and the keyword list, it will be the first found with the search. If used only once in the keyword list it will come up further back in the search.
So the description helps you sell your image.

-Larry

Excellent information Larry. Thank you. It still leaves me wondering of the necessity of it. I mean to say that i have to provide 7 words and this is a tedious process for me at times. Some images just don't need it. The whole uploading process for microstock is hugely unsavory. Every time I see a place where a programmer has inserted a need to do a click when it was not necessary  angers me because it is my time he has chosen to waste.

Peter

How do you see the non Getty sites building out effective and contextual multilingual search unless they ultimately build their databases around a hierarchy based on a structured vocabulary ?

A tough problem and I'm no expert.  But I think some degree of 'structure' can be achieved without the rigid sort of 'control' IS is trying to enforce. Hnest contributors are by far the best source of keywords because they're motivated and they know their subjects.  But the microstocks need ways to weed out the junk dumped into their system by contributors who don't play fair. 

Maybe some sort of incentive plan that rewards buyers for their feedback on which keywords really describe the image or concept.  Maybe a random-sample spot check of keyword relevance, and search ranking penalties for contributors who are obviously spamming.   Or some other brilliant idea for a system that can evolve in a positive direction.

I'm not sure how the sites that have large numbers of international buyers manage the translations, but they certainly seem to bring in the sales.  At SS more than 60% of my sales are from Non US buyers and the vast majority of my sales from Fotolia are European. 

My istock sales, OTOH, mostly seem to come during the North American business day and drop precipitously on US holidays, so I assume they are still mostly from the US. 

Not that I care where my sales come from as long as they come, but clearly istock's CV is not the only game in town for translating to international markets.

In case someone doesn't believe CV has a purpose, here are IS results.

keyword	US	PT	DE	FR	IT	ES
sudoku	77	77	77	77	77	77
africa/afrika/afrique	49750	49750(*)	49750	49750	49750	49750
internet	61807	61807	61807(+)	61807	61807	61807
airport/aeroporto/flughafen/aeroport/aeropuerto	11691	11691	11691(*)	11691	11691	11691

(*) had some problems with this search
(+) required disambiguation