MicrostockGroup

Paranoia 

That's possible, but there are a few out there..., don't know what to think. 

I'm sure there are, but if you apply Newtons third law.....

Haha, +1.

I don't think they are out to get me, as I am not that important to them. Just I am not their favorite baby, even though I am exclusive. 

Easily done! just by the flick of a switch. A friend of mine living in NY, can at times during their business hours, not see my port, or certain parts of my port.
Might be a bug or glitch but I will find out.

The odd thing is that with this latest best match change a lot of my images actually improved a bit in search placement. I have quite a few images that are showing up on the first page or two of major keywords. And sales still dropped. I don't think people would just stop buying my images.

On Monday night I happened to think that an old slow-but-steady image hadn't sold for a while, so I wondered what supadupa photo had usurped it. So I did a search on the main keyword (the very specific location). There are two DAs, and my file is correctly keyworded with both DAs. So I chose one, and the search threw up: 0 results. Hmmm, I have a few for that search and I know of several others. So I tried the other DA: 0 results. Logged out and tried both DAs when logged out - 0 results. Fired up IE and tried again, logged out then logged in, each DA in turn: 0 results. Other random searches were throwing up the selection you would expect.
As it was late at night, and I'm banned, I wrote it on my to-do list for yesterday, and as usual didn't consult my to-do list until bedtime (!). Checked again and my file, and all the others, are showing up. I don't think there's a usurper, mine is still top by downloads, but low-ish by best match.
I wonder how often files just 'disappear', and for how long. As that is a specific location search, a buyer would obviously start looking elsewhere - there is no substitute.

Since November. Where have you been?

LOL, that must be the first time anyone's ever said that, even with a winky.

Apparently, Lobo doesn't like the truth being delivered in one-liners.

Last warning: At the time of the Tokyolypse, someone asked who paid for the 'lypse. That was the one where participants didn't have to pay for tickets, so I answered, "Participants pay for their own flights and accommodation/food, we pay for the rest", which was deleted. Truth hurts.
Final straw: Someone asked how you could do something (forget what) which you 'used to could' do on the site. I replied that you couldn't, it was one of the 'improvements' of F5.
Now actually that turned out not to be strictly 'true', as apparently Sean had written a script to enable that functionality, but it wasn't exactly 'untrue', as it had been stopped with the F5 change, and you couldn't do it natively inside the site.

Wow that's a bit harsh.  I've seen far worse things written without any ban!!

In other words, does best match make certain images disappear for a certain period of time?

I don't think it targets anyone in particular, if it is true. It may cause some seasonal images unsellable in that season, or a bad day during a high volumn weekday. Possible?

How about a conspiracy theory to play with. It's in their best interest to not have people reach the next level. Could the best match be configured to throttle people back in the search who are on target to hit the next level?

Jan through June were strong for me and I was on track to hit the 35% level by the end of 2011. July dropped almost 40% in revenue for me and so far the first few days of August have been down over half of a normal day for me. Coincidence?