MicrostockGroup

I'd delete all of the files with heavy and obvious keyword spamming, I'm loosing my mind trying to track my newly approved photos on Shutterstock. For instance I made a series in a hair salon, every ppl shot has the keyword hair, although a man with a helmet is standing in front of his house. But there are much worse cases, I just uploaded an athletics series, searching for athletics and I get a series of 30 totally crappy shots of BUGS, that immediately pushed my images to the 2nd page. Looking for shopping and finding cartons of eggs. Ahhh. Keyword spamming and huge series of crappy shots are killing MS. And when will they start looking for qualities such as originality, concept and marketability, just checking for IQ doesn't cut it anymore. It's driving away the buyers.

There's one more thing, really related to DT and deleting of similars. I'd say 95% of the pre 2007 content should be deleted on SS, the best shots from that era are just average now (most of them anyway). 75% of post 2007 should be deleted as well, series of tens of shots (on white background) with no or very little variation is killing the search results. There should be a limit of similar images allowed, something like 5 (like on Alamy). So if you shoot for instance athletics, like I did last week, you can upload up to 5 shots of: athlete leaving starting blocks from: a) the front b) the side d) the back. The same for every running/stretching exercise, shots of sprinting, running...Which already is a LOT. I make 2-3 similar at most, but I know some designer may need an image or two more.

Old contributors, don't flame me, think about your old files that never sold or didn't sell for 2+ years. What good do they do in your ports except for cluttering it up and making it harder for the buyers to find the right image and not getting fed up by substandard shots (because you improved so much during all those years) and leaving your port instead of grabbing a few shots

I too agree with the keyword spamming on SS it's really annoying.  When I search the database for an idea I've come up with I like to look at what others have done just in case what I'm thinking off either 1: has been done to death or 2: if it's too close to what others have done.  And I can't look if there are images that don't flipping belong to that particular keyword.  I can't remember what I was looking for but ran across some images and saying "What . does that have to do with what I looked for?"  It's out of control.

They could start by notifying all contributors that keyword spamming is over and inspectors will reject all keyword spammed content. Then they could start doing what DT is doing . I mean if you search for teenager and get a mid aged woman or even older photos like that should be deleted without hesitation (they should put that in the notification as well). They could start with cleaning the library by deleting the most obviously spammed photos. Just going through keywords and deleting images or batches. That really wouldn't be time consuming and they'd get rid of the content that annoys the buyers the most.

The spamming on SS can be pretty bad. It would be nice if they could get the obvious ones out - like the ones of a man where the keyword is woman. I think part (a small part) of the problem on SS is that they split up 2 or more word keywords.  The search is a bit better now that they use the subject for the search too.

It is surprising how often some ancient image that hasn't had sales for years or ever does sell - sometimes an EL too. That is one point in favor of cleaning up the keywords and the search rather than just deleting non or slow sellers.

Another problem is that deleting images on SS is very time-consuming. I wanted to delete my old crap but it is so slooow that I gave it up soon. No wonder that contributors won't do it even if they would like to.
(But maybe there is some faster way that I do not know)
I'm Dreamstime's dream I had cleaned my portfolio there myself and it is ten times faster than on SS.

This is exactly what most buyers want and sell much more than 'some sales'

I would think? an old image with 0 sales would be in the search

most downloaded = near bottom
newest = near bottom
most popular = near bottom

and hence never seen, so not affecting most searches

plenty of my 2007ish files still sell, including some daily, often surprised at ones that pop up every 2-3 months. However if those with 0 sales in 3-4 years were deleted (like DT do) I wouldnt care, but I dont think they would be cluttering up the search (I also am not about to put the work in to go and delete them).

The most overt spamming is from a relatively few contributors, usually with very low-selling portfolios and, it has to be said, often with Eastern European or Russian sounding names. Take this one for example __ I can't even tell what the subject of the image is supposed to be but I reckon only about 4 out of the 50 keywords used can possibly apply;

http://tinyurl.com/3u2mwaf

That didn't happen by accident. It is idiots like that who give all microstockers and agencies a bad name and make us appear a bunch of amateurs trying to make money from our hard drives. I wish SS would just delete such portfolios as they add nothing of value and simply clog up the search results with nonsense.

It started sometime late last year Warren when they started indexing the image description.  I forget when it started but it's been around for like less than 6 months now.

I couldn't agree more, they should delete such ports immediately and lifetime ban them. Besides that, his photos are pathetic!

The simplest solution is usually the best!!