Author Topic: IS Keywording on My Images (Read 2640 times)

NYTumbleweeds · « **on:** January 19, 2009, 16:50 »

I have been auditing my images at IS since sales have slipped down to almost zero and found that I can not get my footballs to show up in any searches despite keywording updates. I emailed support & was told they did appear under specifically "american football black background" but I still can't find any them.

Is it my searching or could somebody please check search and see if they are able to get them??

Keywords: american football black background

other keywords apply but bring up too many pages to sort through of course, I have tried other keyword searches but still can't get anything to come up???

Very much appreciated

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=6598844

or

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=6624631

or

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=7275941

sharply_done · « **Reply #1 on:** January 19, 2009, 17:18 »

Yep, I see your images when I do a search.

FWIW though, I don't think you quite "get" how to keyword properly at IS - terms like "Isolated Football" and "American Football Isolated Black" won't ever be used. You've made a studio shot of a single piece of sports equipment on a black background, and most of the keywords you need are in that last statement. Stretching things to include words like "autumn", "superbowl", and "playoffs" won't lead to increased exposure.

sjlocke · « **Reply #2 on:** January 19, 2009, 17:20 »

Here you go:

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&text="american+football"+"black+background"

eta: Copy that all together there.

madelaide · « **Reply #3 on:** January 19, 2009, 17:27 »

Not with that search, but "american football" "black background" works. That is, you are forced to use quotations marks.

With "american football" ball I can find several correct images, but not these.

The disambiguation works partially well, and I wished no results were shown before the person clicks the meanings he/she wants. I say that because sometimes people get some valid results without clicking the disambiguations, and may go no further. Or else consider all possible meanings, not their internal defaults, until the buyer picks his desired meanings.

Also in the american football black background, search tool considers 3 words for disambiguation (american, football, black). Football can be disambiguated as the the ball itself or as "american football" (but not as soccer - British English is ignored), but if you don't have the keyword "american" alone, this search doesn't get your images.

Regards,
Adelaide

NYTumbleweeds · « **Reply #4 on:** January 19, 2009, 17:32 »

Quote from: sharply_done on January 19, 2009, 17:18

Yep, I see your images when I do a search.

FWIW though, I don't think you quite "get" how to keyword properly at IS - terms like "Isolated Football" and "American Football Isolated Black" won't ever be used. You've made a studio shot of a single piece of sports equipment on a black background, and most of the keywords you need are in that last statement. Stretching things to include words like "autumn", "superbowl", and "playoffs" won't lead to increased exposure.

Thanks for your input... does it show? Nope, I'm not getting it! I am not trying to keyword spam but when I had the keywords individually I didn't get results either.

Thanks again for checking I'm going to have to do a search their and study up on the workings of keywords for them.

NYTumbleweeds · « **Reply #5 on:** January 19, 2009, 17:33 »

Quote from: sjlocke on January 19, 2009, 17:20

Here you go:

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&text="american+football"+"black+background"

eta: Copy that all together there.

The link came up with this:

The search query you entered did not find any matching results.

Please try a more general search term or check your Advanced options, to allow broader results:

* under Search by file sizes & prices, select All for each file type;
* under Shape, ensure that the Vertical, Horizontal and Square icons (, and ) are enabled;
* under More Filters, uncheck all filters;
* or, click the Reset button to restore the site defaults

NYTumbleweeds · « **Reply #6 on:** January 19, 2009, 17:40 »

Quote from: madelaide on January 19, 2009, 17:27

Not with that search, but "american football" "black background" works. That is, you are forced to use quotations marks.

With "american football" ball I can find several correct images, but not these.

The disambiguation works partially well, and I wished no results were shown before the person clicks the meanings he/she wants. I say that because sometimes people get some valid results without clicking the disambiguations, and may go no further. Or else consider all possible meanings, not their internal defaults, until the buyer picks his desired meanings.

Also in the american football black background, search tool considers 3 words for disambiguation (american, football, black). Football can be disambiguated as the the ball itself or as "american football" (but not as soccer - British English is ignored), but if you don't have the keyword "american" alone, this search doesn't get your images.

Regards,
Adelaide

At least you did get it to come up. But you have to go through too much... I am going to have re-audit. Complicated just to find a football shot... thank you though!

sjlocke · « **Reply #7 on:** January 19, 2009, 18:57 »

They're there. Just make sure to paste it together correctly. Two phrases with quoted around each if you want to do it manually.

madelaide · « **Reply #8 on:** January 19, 2009, 20:13 »

But I wonder how often people think about using quotation marks. Experienced people, yes. 98% of internet users possibly not.

If you search american football black background in Google, without quotation marks, you get a lot of stock images in the first pages. None IS. As you progress in the result pages, you see a lot of irrelevant stuff, though maybe correct for the search terms (such as Lewis Black background) but basically the first two pages get those keywords right. First two results are in fact perfect:

american football ball over a black background (123RF)
Close-up of Football Against Black Background (allposters)

Regards,
Adelaide

DanP68 · « **Reply #9 on:** January 20, 2009, 06:40 »

On a related note, I'm very happy with the direction iStock is taking with keywording. Fewer keywords, with an emphasis on what is truly relevant. And apparently indexing each word with their new best match, though none of us seem to be clear on exactly what they are keying on and how the index works.

I'd like to see all agencies take a similar direction. On one hand it helps fight spam. But more importantly, it provides more relevant results for buyers...which means more sales for all of us.

RacePhoto · « **Reply #10 on:** January 27, 2009, 02:52 »

Quote from: DanP68 on January 20, 2009, 06:40

On a related note, I'm very happy with the direction iStock is taking with keywording. Fewer keywords, with an emphasis on what is truly relevant. And apparently indexing each word with their new best match, though none of us seem to be clear on exactly what they are keying on and how the index works.

I'd like to see all agencies take a similar direction. On one hand it helps fight spam. But more importantly, it provides more relevant results for buyers...which means more sales for all of us.

Maybe you understand why this one was rejected for keywords? Comment was "The keywords used for this file do not appear to be fully relevant to the subject."

Keywords: stamps, stamp, isolated, commemorative, USA, Postage, cutout, black, collector, United, States, Smithsonian, Doctor, Architect, James, Buchanan, Wheatland
(you might notice that every keyword is in the image or the subject of the image)

Am I crazy or what's going on here?

e-person · « **Reply #11 on:** January 27, 2009, 04:13 »

Use keywords only for things you can see in the picture. Doctor is irrelevant, even if it is a doctor's house, since there aren't any doctors in it. And so on.

RacePhoto · « **Reply #12 on:** January 27, 2009, 08:24 »

Quote from: e-person on January 27, 2009, 04:13

Use keywords only for things you can see in the picture. Doctor is irrelevant, even if it is a doctor's house, since there aren't any doctors in it. And so on.

Did you look at the stamp? Who is the person leaning over looking at the patient? A doctor!

I can agree with you to some extent, but really, find a word that isn't prominent in one of the images, or in fact printed on the stamps. The topical nature and subject of the stamp should be fair enough or I'd only have five keywords. I'm already minimal with keywords and people think I'm being foolish, but I like to have what's really in the photo or images.

Things I didn't add that one may find in similar stamp keywords. Perforated, brown, black, purple, building, institute, President, bed, trees, towers, chair, porch, lawn, sick, windows, dog...

and really tiny, unimportant features that are misleading. Now that's what some people do and that is keyword spamming.

ps the word commemorative doesn't exist at IS and I've already removed collector because I agree, it's not in the content. It has been replaced with vintage, which seems to be OK.

e-person · « **Reply #13 on:** January 27, 2009, 11:23 »

Yesterday someone added keywords to six of my photos on IS. I mean: ADDED.

For the first time they did not delete perfecly legitimate keywords.

I mean, does this mean there actually are good people at IS, or was it just a one off?

sharply_done · « **Reply #14 on:** January 27, 2009, 12:13 »

Quote from: RacePhoto on January 27, 2009, 08:24

Quote from: e-person on January 27, 2009, 04:13
Use keywords only for things you can see in the picture. Doctor is irrelevant, even if it is a doctor's house, since there aren't any doctors in it. And so on.

Did you look at the stamp? Who is the person leaning over looking at the patient? A doctor!
...

Although I understand where you're coming from, RacePhoto, I agree with the irrelevant keyword rejection.

You'd be better off describing and keywording the image as 'four colourful vintage postage stamps on isolated black background' rather than describing the contents of each stamp. You should be explicitly listing the colours, too. Going a bit further, and given the fact that you now have isolated images of stamps, you'd probably do well to also have isolated images of envelopes with stamps. If you go this route you could use the vintage nature of the material to make up fake letters to notable/famous people (FDR, Albert Einstein, Charles Lindbergh, ...). Who knows - there just be a market for such things!

null · « **Reply #15 on:** January 27, 2009, 12:53 »

On one of my last uploads, they rejected the image of a running businessman for the single keyword "speed". That's right, it's a still photograph and no "speed" can be seen on it.

I'm allowed to resubmit without that keyword. Great, but I'm on limited bandwidth and if they didn't like the keyword, they could as well have deleted it. There was no issue with the other keywords nor with the technical quality.
They should as well reject "businessman" since there was only a guy in suit. Where is the business? He could be a teacher, and undertaker, or a bum that rented a suit to attend his sister's marriage.

null · « **Reply #16 on:** January 27, 2009, 13:09 »

Quote from: e-person on January 27, 2009, 04:13

Use keywords only for things you can see in the picture. Doctor is irrelevant

And what if a buyer is looking for a stamp with a doctor on it? Of course, the content (doctor) is relevant, apart from the medium (stamp).

OK, there are 8547 matches for "postage stamp", let's have a look.
The 3-d shot is a set of 12! icons, of which one is a stamp. Why not just mention icons, instead of enumerating all the objects?
Ah... I got it. It's an exclusive contributor

RacePhoto · « **Reply #17 on:** January 27, 2009, 13:15 »

Quote from: FlemishDreams on January 27, 2009, 12:53

On one of my last uploads, they rejected the image of a running businessman for the single keyword "speed". That's right, it's a still photograph and no "speed" can be seen on it.

I'm allowed to resubmit without that keyword. Great, but I'm on limited bandwidth and if they didn't like the keyword, they could as well have deleted it. There was no issue with the other keywords nor with the technical quality.
They should as well reject "businessman" since there was only a guy in suit. Where is the business? He could be a teacher, and undertaker, or a bum that rented a suit to attend his sister's marriage.

I know that some sites have changed my stamp photos to Editorial, which I appreciate, instead of just rejecting them. I'm working on this as a project because back in Oct. someone was here asking about stamps and I pooh poohed the idea. I thought I might as well run a test and see what happens, then report back. I'm giving it until the end of the month and then I should get around to the somewhat unscientific findings.

I have added the subject of the stamps before and had no problems, so this one struck me as out of the ordinary.

I'll take the advise and leave off the subject of the stamps, and I'm still not doing the colors because it's keyword spamming in my opinion. Finished fixing the rejected example and two others rejected for "stray pixels". Before anyone jumps on this, one sale in three months on IS (a single stamp), two on SS (the same set, both times) and none on six other sites. I just wanted to give them a fair chance on all the test sites to come back with some possibly useful information. Sent three more out to another site, just to see if they will take them at all.

I suspect that the reason the others like this with the topic of the stamp in the keywords, that passed, is that some reviewers may be English speaking as a second language and all the odd words, looked like they had nothing to do with stamps, so they just bounced them. The regulars there actually looked at the photos.

I'm getting better at having my keywords match the limits and not adding things like "commemorative" or "US" or "mail" or "postal". I'm convinced that it's not mail, and I finally got the category right for IS. Still working on DT that rejected one for wrong categories. Like you said, why they don't just change it, I don't know?

Just trying to work within the system and makes things go smoother. The reason for putting four in one image came from the vectors where people put more than one subject in a file and it appears to enhance downloads.

True, the search for Postage Stamps turns up some vegetables, many times envelopes or postal cards and many rubber stamps. You'll have to go to page 12 or 15 to find one of mine. I don't know how anyone found the one they bought.

Thanks for all the comments everyone.

null · « **Reply #18 on:** January 27, 2009, 13:29 »

Quote from: RacePhoto on January 27, 2009, 13:15

True, the search for Postage Stamps turns up some vegetables, many times envelopes or postal cards and many rubber stamps.

Well I looked specifically for "postal stamps" and yet I got loads of rubber stamps, mailboxes and even a pair of foot imprints on the sand (yes it was uploaded recently).

This remark is totally subjective, and now I'm talking as an occasional buyer: I just can't find quickly what I want on iStock, but I do on Dreamstime. Even if DT doesn't have the advanced semantic technology of iStock, I find faster what I want and with less spam. Apparently, the best match or whatever doesn't work too well in real life.

The problem is that all these forums are contributor-oriented and not buyer-oriented. A contributor is interested in his earnings and placement, a buyer is interested in finding the right image quickly and he is not inclined to report on forums since has no time nor interest doing it.