Author Topic: Search results between iStock and Fotolia..womens health (Read 2335 times)

donding · « **on:** April 28, 2009, 11:39 »

I just did a search to see what it would pull up....search term was womens health..Fotolia pulled up 24 hits..some had to do with womens health not many..same search on iStock...848 results..most had to do with Womens health.
Then I used womans health spelled with an a...Fotolia pulled up 47 files...all they show is womans leg's, faces and lips...good greif that doesn't even relate to womans health.
iStock pulled up 2929 and the pictures were more along the lines of womans health. I personally don't consider an isolated image of a woman licking her lips or one of legs with high boots on them relative to womans health. this were on the first results page.

lisafx · « **Reply #1 on:** April 28, 2009, 11:57 »

I'm surprised Fotolia turned up so few. Did you use "women's health" in quotes?
If so, that's probably the reason for the great disparity (although not the spam).

Istock's search engine is designed to be used with phrases. As far as I know Fotolia's isn't optimized for phrases. Personally, although I have lots of photos related to women's health, I don't add phrases to Fotolia, only individual words.

Try searching Fotolia for woman and healthcare as separate keywords.

louoates · « **Reply #2 on:** April 28, 2009, 11:58 »

If you've been in this micro business long enough this wouldn't surprise you. Keyword searches are just plain goofy, depending on the site. A good way to go nuts is to try to put some logic to it.
My best advice is leave the logic on the shelf, shoot more, and worry less.
And don't get me started on categories!

donding · « **Reply #3 on:** April 28, 2009, 12:13 »

Quote from: louoates on April 28, 2009, 11:58

If you've been in this micro business long enough this wouldn't surprise you. Keyword searches are just plain goofy, depending on the site. A good way to go nuts is to try to put some logic to it.
My best advice is leave the logic on the shelf, shoot more, and worry less.
And don't get me started on categories!

Well I've been in it for about two years now and really have never done a search before ...I don't even go cruising other peoples portfolio's unless they ask...I usually do just what you suggested and I think I'm just gonna continue otherwise I'll go insane.

donding · « **Reply #4 on:** April 28, 2009, 12:18 »

Quote from: lisafx on April 28, 2009, 11:57

I'm surprised Fotolia turned up so few. Did you use "women's health" in quotes?
If so, that's probably the reason for the great disparity (although not the spam).

Istock's search engine is designed to be used with phrases. As far as I know Fotolia's isn't optimized for phrases. Personally, although I have lots of photos related to women's health, I don't add phrases to Fotolia, only individual words.

Try searching Fotolia for woman and healthcare as separate keywords.

No I just put it womens health...then womans health..not quotes. The interesting thing was the photos it pulled up were totally different for each search on Fotolia...so I guess....wow I just did a research on Fotolia for woemn health...and woman health...singular not plural. I guess I need to start putting all the different spellings of a word as well as singular and plural. I never do this because I figured they considered it spamming keywords.

lisafx · « **Reply #5 on:** April 28, 2009, 12:30 »

Eeeep! That sort of inconsistency is really worrying. How on Earth are buyers supposed to find what they want?

The searches on all sites should pluralize words automatically. Contributors shouldn't have to keyword every possible tense of every word in order to show up in relevant searches.

Although the last six months or so the best match at Istock was in a lot of turmoil, it seems in the end that Istock's BM2 is really a landmark. Hopefully other sites will eventually follow suit and work on making their searches equally relevant. If they can do it without the accompanying drama, even better

Peter · « **Reply #6 on:** April 28, 2009, 12:42 »

you should search for

woman health

not womanS health

leave that "s" out.

nobody put keyword "womans" in their images. I know I dont. But everybody put word "woman".

gostwyck · « **Reply #7 on:** April 28, 2009, 12:43 »

Quote from: donding on April 28, 2009, 11:39

I just did a search to see what it would pull up....search term was womens health..Fotolia pulled up 24 hits..some had to do with womens health not many..same search on iStock...848 results..most had to do with Womens health.
Then I used womans health spelled with an a...Fotolia pulled up 47 files...all they show is womans leg's, faces and lips...good greif that doesn't even relate to womans health.
iStock pulled up 2929 and the pictures were more along the lines of womans health. I personally don't consider an isolated image of a woman licking her lips or one of legs with high boots on them relative to womans health. this were on the first results page.

If you use 'female' and 'health' then you get plenty of results at FT. Their search engine is 100% accurate to the actual keywords used __ so therefore the use of woman, womans, women, womens, female and females as search terms will all produce different results.

The IS search instead tends to group gender terms together (woman, female, etc) as well as singular and plural terms.

Each facilty has its advantages and disadvantages and both require some knowledge on behalf of the user to obtain the best results.

batman · « **Reply #8 on:** April 28, 2009, 12:53 »

Quote from: donding on April 28, 2009, 11:39

EDITED
....good greif that doesn't even relate to womans health.
.... I personally don't consider an isolated image of a woman licking her lips or one of legs with high boots on them relative to womans health. this were on the first results page.

so true donding. i guess to some ppl, being able to lick one's lips, or pull up a high boot , indicate the good health of a woman. after all, if she is not in good health, she would not be able to do that.

good point, but i 'm not sure if the sites would agree .

bittersweet · « **Reply #9 on:** April 28, 2009, 13:21 »

Hint: these are not real words:

womans
womens

Try some apostrophes. IStock's search engine automatically corrects these common grammatical errors. Perhaps Fotolia's does not.

donding · « **Reply #10 on:** April 28, 2009, 14:57 »

Quote from: whatalife on April 28, 2009, 13:21

Hint: these are not real words:

womans
womens

Try some apostrophes. IStock's search engine automatically corrects these common grammatical errors. Perhaps Fotolia's does not.

Well spelling and proper grammer was never my strong point....I guess I need to start deleting and reuploading to Fotolia to get the correct grammer and spelling.

Hmmmm maybe that's why I hardly sell anything on Fotolia and do all the other sites. $:-\$

melastmohican · « **Reply #11 on:** April 28, 2009, 15:30 »

Being software developer I can tell that if bug report like this show up on my plate I would dismiss it with comment "user error" :-)

tan510jomast · « **Reply #12 on:** April 28, 2009, 20:01 »

i guess you cannot use apostrophe , huh? so womens, and womans, are meaningless. did you use feminine ?

madelaide · « **Reply #13 on:** April 28, 2009, 20:10 »

I don't think one would use female health or feminine health. Site's should be smart enough to replace "women's health" by women health.

Google understands "women's health".

gostwyck · « **Reply #14 on:** April 28, 2009, 20:46 »

Quote from: madelaide on April 28, 2009, 20:10

Google understands "women's health".

Absurd comparison __ I think you'll find that Google has been around a bit longer than FT and has a couple more employees deployed on SEO too. Google does SEO; FT sells image licenses. I think FT sells many more image licenses than Google.

madelaide · « **Reply #15 on:** April 28, 2009, 20:53 »

Gostwyck, you missed my point. I was simply trying to say that it isn't a complex issue to replace "'s" by nothing in a search tool (or at least offering a choice, what is also done by Google when it thinks you may have writen something wrong).

The search tool is essential in a stock photo site. It has to be well thought and it has to receive a very intense attention by skilled programmers.

Edit: Have you guys tried DT? Not every image is about health, but they have "women's" in title and/or description. Good work, DT.

Xalanx · « **Reply #16 on:** April 29, 2009, 01:52 »

Quote from: madelaide on April 28, 2009, 20:53

I was simply trying to say that it isn't a complex issue to replace "'s" by nothing in a search tool (or at least offering a choice, what is also done by Google when it thinks you may have writen something wrong).

Unless you're a software developer, your afirmation is rather assumptious. Because I am a developer and SEO algorithms are indeed complex and changing them is not some easy job to do and of course needs resources (time, people) allocated.
I for one don't express my opinion in a matter that goes beyong my area of expertise, just for the sake of posting in a thread.
And you should not compare any stock agency search engine with Google.

lisafx · « **Reply #17 on:** April 29, 2009, 08:25 »

Quote from: Xalanx on April 29, 2009, 01:52

Unless you're a software developer, your afirmation is rather assumptious. Because I am a developer and SEO algorithms are indeed complex and changing them is not some easy job to do and of course needs resources (time, people) allocated.
I for one don't express my opinion in a matter that goes beyong my area of expertise, just for the sake of posting in a thread.

Wow. Pretty harsh.

Seems to me that all of us are profoundly affected by the search engines on the micro sites. It's only natural to have (and express) an opinion about something that affects your business so directly.

Thank goodness there are people like yourself, Xalanx, who do understand the complexities involved and are willing to explain them.

tan510jomast · « **Reply #18 on:** April 29, 2009, 08:41 »

Quote from: Xalanx on April 29, 2009, 01:52

Unless you're a software developer, your afirmation is rather assumptious. Because I am a developer and SEO algorithms are indeed complex and changing them is not some easy job to do and of course needs resources (time, people) allocated.
I for one don't express my opinion in a matter that goes beyong my area of expertise, just for the sake of posting in a thread.
And you should not compare any stock agency search engine with Google.

and i imagine you put this SD knowledge to good use in your keywording. i just spoke to a friend who's a Math Major who just finished a lecture on the complexity of SEO algorithms. i was expressing to her how bad i was in keywords, and she said that it does take a bit of understanding. Being an Arts Major, I am an idiot to this. We're going to meet for Guinness and hot wings when she returns from PEI as I need her help in this badly.

so i truly envy you Xalanx, for the advantage you have over us dumb Arts Majors

keep in touch and continue to share your knowledge with us, ok ?

madelaide · « **Reply #19 on:** April 29, 2009, 17:22 »

Quote from: Xalanx on April 29, 2009, 01:52

Quote from: madelaide on April 28, 2009, 20:53
I was simply trying to say that it isn't a complex issue to replace "'s" by nothing in a search tool (or at least offering a choice, what is also done by Google when it thinks you may have writen something wrong).
Unless you're a software developer, your afirmation is rather assumptious. Because I am a developer and SEO algorithms are indeed complex and changing them is not some easy job to do and of course needs resources (time, people) allocated.
I for one don't express my opinion in a matter that goes beyong my area of expertise, just for the sake of posting in a thread.
And you should not compare any stock agency search engine with Google.

I am not a professional programmer, but being an engineer I have been involved with programming for (too) many years. There is no difficulty in transforming a string "women's health" in "women health". I am sure stock site programmers face much more challenging tasks than this, given the image sizes, lightboxes, billing, different OSs and browsers, etc., so FT programmers could do that as well. If a buyer types "women's health", he is not wrong; the site is wrong if doesn't handle this search correctly.

Having said that, I have noticed that the OP didn't say "women's health" but "womens health". And this is what I see:
- In FT, the resulting images have "womens" as a keyword (unreal word, correct search)
- In DT, the resulting images have "womens" in title/description (again, unreal word, correct search)
- In IS, the search engine does not find "womens" because it's not in CV; it offers results for "women's health" instead (smart search engine, guessing what the person might have wanted to search)

I have looked into some of my own images, DT saves the apostrophe in my descriptions, so I guess the members indeed wrote "womens" instead of "women's" - I thought maybe the site would have cut the apostrophe. In FT, "valentine's" became "valentine s"; I have no idea how FT handles this in the end. A search for "valentine's day abstract background" doesn't return my image, so it seems "valentine's" is not the same as "valentine s". I do see many interesting things in the results. In some images, "valentine" and "s" are keywords, so either the user typed the "s" separately or his IPTC data software split the term.

OM · « **Reply #20 on:** April 30, 2009, 05:23 »

Quote from: madelaide on April 29, 2009, 17:22

Quote from: Xalanx on April 29, 2009, 01:52
Quote from: madelaide on April 28, 2009, 20:53
I was simply trying to say that it isn't a complex issue to replace "'s" by nothing in a search tool (or at least offering a choice, what is also done by Google when it thinks you may have writen something wrong).
Unless you're a software developer, your afirmation is rather assumptious. Because I am a developer and SEO algorithms are indeed complex and changing them is not some easy job to do and of course needs resources (time, people) allocated.
I for one don't express my opinion in a matter that goes beyong my area of expertise, just for the sake of posting in a thread.
And you should not compare any stock agency search engine with Google.

I am not a professional programmer, but being an engineer I have been involved with programming for (too) many years. There is no difficulty in transforming a string "women's health" in "women health". I am sure stock site programmers face much more challenging tasks than this, given the image sizes, lightboxes, billing, different OSs and browsers, etc., so FT programmers could do that as well. If a buyer types "women's health", he is not wrong; the site is wrong if doesn't handle this search correctly.