MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: charlesknox on November 14, 2008, 21:57
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After hearing all the complaints about the new best match at IS and everyone taking a hit to there income because of it, what do you think is the best way to solve the problem? Whats the best way to do best match?
what type of ranking system do you think is the most fair?
I've been wondering this for a while now and was just wondering what other people thought about it.
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A mixture of new and dls/month with none or very little emphasis on exclusivity.
Give the exclusive more money or whatever but I don't think that making exclusives first in the search is fair to independents or buyers who don't get to see a lot of very good images.
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Whats the best way to do best match?
Thats an easy one. The best one will be the one that puts all my images on the firts page of every search. Anything less is simply not fair or in the interest of the buyers. :D
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No, no, you got to remember, this so called Best-Match is an IS invention, they are the only ones using this one and in early IS days with a million shots it probably worked OK.
Today, with 4 million files, mixing excl. with non-excl, add to this, its been a spammers paradise for years.
So how can anything with a Best-Match alog. work?
While spending the next 100 years sorting out this mess, the last desperate move was to gve priority to top-exclusive contributors, at least stopping them from jumping ship.
Further more, Getty is breathing down their necks with rules and regulations asking for results, its business, results is what its all about. probably also promising that within a few years the will have bought up every single site to become one giant exclusive agency without any competition ( which will ofcourse never happen ) since that would be bad for business. So hey guys! dont worry! dads looking after you!
What a great life being a photographer in this policy complex, isnt it?
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Dreamstime have it right. The more work you put in there, the more you are rewarded. They don't seem to make huge changes that make my earnings crash.
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Dreamstime have it right. The more work you put in there, the more you are rewarded. They don't seem to make huge changes that make my earnings crash.
Yes, DT has got that right and I believe, SS, FT and StockXpert are on par with that........ and thats ofcourse the way it should be.
Throughout history. good work and in our case good shots should ofcourse be rewarded.
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After hearing all the complaints about the new best match at IS and everyone taking a hit to there income because of it,
Why do you think everyone is taking a hit?
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Best match for me is about search terms bringing closest results. Therefore, using not only keywords (and what FT considers is a very good idea - put most relevant ones first), but also description and title.
If I search for "pink rose", probably an image that is named "pink rose", whose description is "pink rose on a vase" and has "pink" and "rose" in the keywords, is more relevant than an image of a woman using a pink shirt with a bouquet of white flowers on her hand.
This, plus some other things as dls/month or dls/views could be considered, but to me title, description and keywords (DT model) with first keywords taken in higher consideration (FT model) would be the first things to consider.
Regards,
Adelaide
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I'm not a contributor at IS and am fairly new to the microstock thing ... but ... I would think the search criteria is based on what the buyer wants. Even if they are not getting a "Best Match," IS has managed to sell the idea that the IS search engine is unique ... exactly what a buyer needs. Pretty good sales pitch, huh?
Has anyone seen the IS marketing/sales package?
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Well yes, probably was unique once. I mean IS was the first after what Ive heard so everything about it must have been unique.
All complaining apart, IS, is a great agency so why cant they just keep thing easy, most of all the search?
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After hearing all the complaints about the new best match at IS and everyone taking a hit to there income because of it,
Why do you think everyone is taking a hit?
Have you forgotten, Sean? "everyone" = non-exclusives who complain here
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It have been discussed on more than 60 pages 2 times already on the Istock forum. There's nothing more to say that nobody agree with nobody on this subject.
Here it have been discussed many times in the last 2 months, you can have all your answers here...
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=6082.0
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=6227.0
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=5993.0
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=6261.0
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=5806.0
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After hearing all the complaints about the new best match at IS and everyone taking a hit to there income because of it,
Why do you think everyone is taking a hit?
I'm with you. Either some people are getting much much better sales and "everyone" else is selling less, or iStock has a had a big drop in sales. One is related to the other.
I keep reading about how photos have dropped back in the search and how sales are in the dumper. That means other photos have moved up in the search and are making more sales? Can't have one without the other. There are no empty spaces at the beginning of the searches. ;D
If the answer is Exclusives have actually been moved to the front of the class, then that's the way IS wants to run things. I don't know this to be true, but it's the only answer that makes logical sense.
It's not Best Match if lower matching photos are ranked higher and display first before better keyword matches. It's a contradiction.
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Madelaide got it right. Best match should essentially be employed for the benefit of the BUYER - to get the most relevant picture for the search term(s) used. IS apparently see best match as a tool to benefit CONTRIBUTERS and in its latest incarnation openly and undeniably to benefit their exclusive photographers.
Personally I have no problem with that as I can also become an exclusive IS photographer. I choose not to because I am not willing to sacrifice 80% of my monthly income, which can in no way be compensated for by increased sales at IS as an exclusive photographer. My question is this: for how long can IS continue to benefit their exclusives at the cost of their BUYERS. When will the buyers get fed up to wade through pages of irrelevant images which are placed before more relevant images just because they are from exclusive photographers. In the end this can only have negative consequences for everybody when buyers start to leave for other agencies. There are indications that this is already happening as indicated by a dramatic drop in IS traffic.
I have done some experiments of my own and I concluded that a buyer at IS I will really be frustrated with the poor results of the current best match results. If I was an exclusive photographer at IS I will be nervous because it is clear that IS is gambling with their current good fortunes.
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Eco and everyone else who has pointed out the IS flawed search, if it really is weighted towards exclusives and is actually giving buyers less than honest Best Matches. It came to me after reading your message.
Maybe iStock Just Doesn't Care? :o
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I said that earlier in the IS forum, when members like Sean is hit and starts complaining a bit. As far as Im concerned thats bad news. When they cant even look after exclusives of that caliber, something is badly wrong.
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wow! thanks everyone. ya i was just wondering what the ideal way to do it would be. Thanks and hope i didn't get anybody mad!
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Madelaide got it right. Best match should essentially be employed for the benefit of the BUYER - to get the most relevant picture for the search term(s) used. IS apparently see best match as a tool to benefit CONTRIBUTERS and in its latest incarnation openly and undeniably to benefit their exclusive photographers.
There is no relevancy involved in Best Match, as has been said thousands of time. As for benefitting the buyer, I hardly see any complaints from buyers about the returns from the sort. They don't come onto the forum screaming about how bad it is.
Personally I have no problem with that as I can also become an exclusive IS photographer. I choose not to because I am not willing to sacrifice 80% of my monthly income, which can in no way be compensated for by increased sales at IS as an exclusive photographer. My question is this: for how long can IS continue to benefit their exclusives at the cost of their BUYERS. When will the buyers get fed up to wade through pages of irrelevant images which are placed before more relevant images just because they are from exclusive photographers. In the end this can only have negative consequences for everybody when buyers start to leave for other agencies. There are indications that this is already happening as indicated by a dramatic drop in IS traffic.
FYI, if your perceived drop in IS traffic has to do with Alexa, you can disregard that, again mentioned many times. By the way, there are just as many independent irrelevant images as exclusive.
I have done some experiments of my own and I concluded that a buyer at IS I will really be frustrated with the poor results of the current best match results. If I was an exclusive photographer at IS I will be nervous because it is clear that IS is gambling with their current good fortunes.
I'd say you're slightly biased in your experiment. Maybe you'd like to provide us with your example of poor results.
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Sean, it is a bit like sport. We all tend to defend our team, even if they are losing or playing badly. I am only stating my view and if you do not agree it is fine with me. I have nothing to gain or lose by “proving” anything. Enough said.
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I like the Alamy way of doing it because it is based on precise algorithm and criteria and Alamy provide very useful tools to analyse your own ranking and thus imrove your keywords. And the whole thing sounds logical to me.
Concerning IS new best match, whatever the criteria or result, I cannot see any good explanation to the fact that an almost blue flame photo (i.e. which buyers do like a lot) which is ranked #3 when sorting on number of download is ranked when using best match after an older photo with 7 downloads... but from an exclusive photographer.
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I think if I was a buyer and the results coming back weren't very good I wouldn't post complaints in the forum, I would just look elsewhere. My guess is that only the huge buyers with subscriptions would really care a lot since they are kind of stuck with it but small buyers would just use up credits and then move to another agency where results are better. Contributors complain because we are losing money.
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I like the Alamy way of doing it because it is based on precise algorithm and criteria and Alamy provide very useful tools to analyse your own ranking and thus imrove your keywords. And the whole thing sounds logical to me.
Concerning IS new best match, whatever the criteria or result, I cannot see any good explanation to the fact that an almost blue flame photo (i.e. which buyers do like a lot) which is ranked #3 when sorting on number of download is ranked when using best match after an older photo with 7 downloads... but from an exclusive photographer.
There are a variety of factors in this result: age (results ordering by dowloads last years to change, people gets more or less the same results there than six months ago; that would create a boring and repetiive best match result), dls/month, ratings, etc.
On the other hand, pushing exclusives carries to the front the photos that any other agency has. That's good for the customers and for the agency. An then, for exclusives. After reading in forums like this how much are doing many of you (as stated by you) independents on others sites, if istock wan to retain their exclusive unique strength, probably the extra comission and other little perks are not enough.
Losing independants would be bad, but losing exclusives would be even worse. After all, there's a clear surplus of new photographer's and lost independants woukld make room for new ones.
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There are a variety of factors in this result: age (results ordering by dowloads last years to change, people gets more or less the same results there than six months ago; that would create a boring and repetiive best match result), dls/month, ratings, etc.
My photo: 833 downloads, 4786 views (17% purchase ratio), uploaded 2007-02, 1 review (5/5), 6 public lightboxes
The photo before mine in best match: 7 downloads, 288 views (2.5% purchase ratio), uploaded 2005-06, 1 review (5/5), 2 public lightboxes
Myself and the contributor of the second photo have both almost an identical number of files and downloads.
How can you tweak the numbers to explain this order? Just curious.
On the other hand, pushing exclusives carries to the front the photos that any other agency has. That's good for the customers and for the agency. An then, for exclusives. After reading in forums like this how much are doing many of you (as stated by you) independents on others sites, if istock wan to retain their exclusive unique strength, probably the extra comission and other little perks are not enough.
Losing independants would be bad, but losing exclusives would be even worse. After all, there's a clear surplus of new photographer's and lost independants woukld make room for new ones.
I have no problem with a fair advantage towards exclusive contributors, even a strong advantage (but it should be officially admitted by IS), but as far as I have read on IS forums, many exclusive do also complain on the new best match algorithm.
And a question to Sean: I don't know whether you benefit or not from the change, but how do you feel to make business with a company which can so deeply affect your earnings without giving any reason or explanation?
I do not complain that much with IS new best match because I cannot do anything, but I'm now very happy not to be exclusive with them and I don't trust this site anymore for the forseeable future: this is just neither a fair nor a serious way to treat IS contributors IMHO.
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Isn't exclusive content only valuable if it is the best there is out there? Pushing exclusive images to the front without regard for which images are the best would seem to be a bad idea. For instance if someone goes to dreamstime and sees a bunch of yuri's photos on the front page because they have sold a billion times and are arguably some of the best or goes to IS and sees a bunch of exclusives images that have sold a few times, wouldn't they only want istock's images if they were better. IS has pushed old exclusive content to the front, at least that is what I have seen in some of the searches for images where I was doing well, I think objectively my xl images with lots of sales/day are better than many of the medium sized images from 2005 with ten times less downloads/day.
And I do agree with the above post, that I'm glad I didn't go exclusive at IS. I have total mistrust of them now and this is after I pulled all of my images off Dreamstime and lost six months of earnings there because I was so sure I was going exclusive on IS, all of my images are now back on DT and I really regret taking down my portfolio.
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I doubt having a page crowded with Yuri's of any other photographer images in front would be good for customers, because it only would show one or a few styles. And don't be fooled, really good and selling independent work appears on front at istock searches, maybe not so many files to do a "thematic page", but it appears.
On the other hand, uniqueness is a key commercial argument everywhere. Can you imagine a shop that has unique merchandise not showing it in the window shop, to show what all the others shops in the same street have? (and even more if you aren't the shop that is selling cheaper this common merchandise).
And exclusive work is --at the very least--, as good as independent work.
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I didn't mean just yuri's but there are a lot of nonexclusives that have some of the best work out there. The point was that if exclusivity is more important than getting the best images the results will suffer. I highly doubt buyers care at all whether an image is exclusive to istock it still can have been sold to thousands of other businesses, the highest quality collection and best search results seem to be most important. Getting a good collection by having exclusives on it is part of it but putting their images before other higher quality more salable images doesn't make IS more useful for buyers does it? It is IS's decision to do what they want and it really doesn't matter too much to me, I would much rather sell images at DT or anywhere else where I will get higher commissions, so if buyers leave IS and I get more sales from other sites I'd be happy.
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If you don't understand the point about uniqueness in a market that offers almost exactly the same pics everywhere, I'll just add that I disagree.
And, well, the fact is that anybody can have anything both ways. It's a choice.
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There is no relevancy involved in Best Match, as has been said thousands of time. As for benefitting the buyer, I hardly see any complaints from buyers about the returns from the sort. They don't come onto the forum screaming about how bad it is.
Yes, as Sean says, "best match" on istock has nothing to do with relevancy as has been repeated to the contributors repeatedly - I actually find that disingenuous as a buyer - istock can sort its searches any way it wants to ... that is their business ... but when a buyer goes to istock and sees "best match", they assume that is what it means ... i.e. the best match for the key words they have input and that is relevancy - I would bet 95% of the buyers on istock assume that best match says what it implies ... a search based on the relevancy of their keywords ...
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Madelaide got it right. Best match should essentially be employed for the benefit of the BUYER - to get the most relevant picture for the search term(s) used. IS apparently see best match as a tool to benefit CONTRIBUTERS and in its latest incarnation openly and undeniably to benefit their exclusive photographers.
There is no relevancy involved in Best Match, as has been said thousands of time. As for benefitting the buyer, I hardly see any complaints from buyers about the returns from the sort. They don't come onto the forum screaming about how bad it is.
So I guess there is no keyword spamming problem since buyers don't come to the forum screaming about it. There's life out there outside of the forums also you know :D Besides this thread is about how we feel best match should look like and I think most would agree relevancy should (if could) be a part of it.
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Oh, I totally agree relevancy should be a factor. I've argued for weighted keywords and sales tracking from searches as much as anyone, if not more.
But we ain't there yet.
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I also think that some weighing system for keywords should be employed. When you allow 50 or 100 or whatever keywords people rush to fill all the slots because that increases the chance of image being seen and consequentially spamming. if you reduce that to 10 or less people start complaining how thats not enough.
IMHO problem is that there is no boundary between conceptual and descriptive keywords. for instance, if you have a boy and a girl with a bouquet of flowers, i pressume most people would tag it with "love, relationship, romance etc..." to broaden the chance of it being used for that purpose. And then it also gets "Valentine, anniversary, gift" etc etc... is it spamming? on one hand it is, because it is arguable that the picture represents solely one concept and that it represents it clearly. on the other hand, the buyer searching for Valentine picture for next magazine issue might and most probably will include Valentine and then if your image doesn't have it as a keyword it will never be found. what should the image tagged with Valentine have? Who is to say that? kisses, roses, hearts, people in love....?
i think that categories are useless, they just waste contributors time when uploading and can also be misused. I think that you should give slots for up to 5 keywords, but no more for describing concept that photographer had in mind when he made the picture. those keywords should be ordered by importance. the buyer could check whether he wants to search by preconcepted photos or just go after whats in the picture. the rest should strictly be descriptive keywords describing only what actually is on the photo and have no weighing. maybe splitting them into major keywords (are there people in the picture, how many, full body or closeup, what objects) and minor (what hair color, what composition, what clothing).
now, how to rearrange the 3 million photo collection....
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Oh, I totally agree relevancy should be a factor. I've argued for weighted keywords and sales tracking from searches as much as anyone, if not more.
But we ain't there yet.
Yeah I know, I've read one of your replies on the IS forums about it.
BTW here's what I wrote in the topic "How's your month shaping up (http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=6249)" and is talking about the keyword relevance search:
Mostly agree with you but let me offer another idea for the algorithm, that has been mentioned a few times and I think would solve at least two problems at the same time: it (should) return good results and it would help against keyword abuse. Here it goes: sites would have to track the keywords that lead to the download of a particular image. For each keyword you would have a factor of relevance. This way you would get good (because they sold many times) relevant (because their relevance factor is high) images at the front. Ofc you would have to put in other factors like age to give newer images a chance at the start. Also sometimes people go to your portfolio and don't download image on a keyword but just by browsing. You could maybe add a small factor like 0.1 to all keywords if an images get's downloaded like that.
However it looks like this would be too hard to implement (also you would need to track a lot of data, have a seperate field in the database for all keywords on a image). So I don't see it coming anytime soon.
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CofkoCof, I think your plan for tracking the keywords that led to sales is really good, and I am betting that as this industry matures something like that will become the standard.
But for the reasons you mentioned I don't think it will happen any time soon.
I also doubt istock will be the one to implement it. They seem to be hampered by shaky infrastructure. I suspect that may be the underlying cause of a lot of the peripheral issues (buggy search results, site slowdowns/outages, no more live stats, etc.) that are always cropping up.
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CofkoCof, I think your plan for tracking the keywords that led to sales is really good, and I am betting that as this industry matures something like that will become the standard.
But for the reasons you mentioned I don't think it will happen any time soon.
I also doubt istock will be the one to implement it. They seem to be hampered by shaky infrastructure. I suspect that may be the underlying cause of a lot of the peripheral issues (buggy search results, site slowdowns/outages, no more live stats, etc.) that are always cropping up.
I thought Dreamstime already did this? :)
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The sales relevancy idea is nothing new. As I mentioned we've been throwing that and manually weighted keywords around as suggs for a couple of years.
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I'm very interested to know, based on your experiences, what of these is closest to (statisticaly) average buyer:
a) do they want to buy an image that is proven with many sales (which means that it is a strong image but also appearing on many many other places)?
b) do they want to buy an image that hasn't been used much (low number of dls)?
c) they don't care
it seems to me that pushing good sellers on top of search which is kind of standard search engine behavior forces those images on buyers leaving much other material unseen. if it doesn't sell quickly it gets burried. maybe it was the best option in the beginning when image database had less than 1 million images (which is zilch compared to macro stock libraries), but now maybe more than 80% of content never gets noticed. what is the point of having 3,4 or 5 million images that are not easily available to buyers. how deep does the majority dig into search results? page 10, page 50...? I don't think so.
if you would shuffle search results to enable equal exposure to both old and new, sold and unsold files and in the same time tighten the reviewing standards to be even more strict to weed out bad photos, it would yield better, healthier image library and in the same time contributors would know to play the quality game over quantity game, because accepted images would pay off even if not noticed immediately, no need for large series of same images.
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Yes :)