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I just noticed that the SS darkroom now shows the keywords used to find the images.

It shows the top 5 keywords used and the percentage for each of them. No real surprises in my short look at it, but many many of the searches seem to be just one word as I suspected. Not only because the chances that a multiple keyword search is used enough to show up in the top 5 is lower and because I think buyers tend to try one word, then if they don't see an image they like in the first few pages then they try more words.

In any case, this is more potentially interesting and useful data from SS. Thanks.

I like this.

That's great!   So helpful.  Some surprises in there for me too.  I'm looking forward to seeing what other treats they have in store for 'The Darkroom'.  I see their speeding up the message boards too (currently down for maintenance).  I love Shutterstock  

Neat. I see though a few of mine hit  mainly on two words. Majority was one word though.

Very interesting!  I hadn't tried out the Darkroom feature before.  Thanks for posting


Same experience here.  It's frustrating to see how many potential sales I could be missing at Istock because the top searched words on a given image may not be part of the CV.

I looked at it a bit more and there are a few things that are confusing to me, for instance these keywords were listed for a file with only one download...

central (33%); central park (33%); park (33%)

does that mean that the person was searching on "central, central park, park" or  was the search for " "central park" central park " ?

(as an aside, if I was searching for an image of central park in NYC, I'd have considered this image a spam, since I think they keywords I actually had were "central oregon" and "smith rock state park" - I guess the buyer wanted it though.)

In any case, there were a few surprises, but I'm not sure quite how to take advantage of this info. Unfortunately we can't see the searches that didn't show the image but should have (missing keywords). Although maybe looking through the top 100 keywords might help for that.

I do like the features they are putting in the darkroom section. I only wish they would include the files with 0 sales, especially while sorting by upload date.

As far as the CV on IS goes, I always thought that "none of the above" should be a viable CV for any given keyword. So that way I could have Mount Helen - that isn't Mt St Helen.

I think you are right on with the "central park" analysis, Tom,  and I am convinced that a lot of the "spamming" paranoia is just that .... misunderstanding and paranoia.

Also, I did learn a lot from just a short browse.  Much of what I thought would be used for keywords on my images was WAY off.  And, I need to shoot a lot more stuff on which I can use the keyword "Native American." 

I'm starting to see what Sean (SJLocke) is talking about.  Did I just share too much?  LOL

Yes, no telling secrets like MY best keywords.  

It was educational, I found one of my ELs with no words (visual search I guess?) Found two that I always wondered why people were buying them and the information explained it. 90% were using one word that was in with a whole bunch that it could have been.

But it's nice to know that people found my images without using a thesaurus and just used simple English words! I'm not wasting time looking for more words than exactly what's prominent in the image and happy to see it's that way. Of course I'll keep using the biological classifications and proper names, but I won't be using five different ways to label a red rose as four other subtle variations of red!

I think I have some ideas for new images now that I see what people were looking for. Cool!

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I think the example above is showing how SS is dividing up the best match points given to an image that has recorded a sale. 

Somebody searched for "central" and "park" and purchased your image.  SS then awarded .33 of a point to "central park", .33 to "central" and .33 to "park" boosting your image moderately in all three searches.  If only a single term is searched rather than two, 1 point is awarded to that term and it gets a more significant boost in best match.

I have a bunch of images that have sold once and now give .33 to a bunch of nonsense terms, things that almost nobody (other than the person who purchased my image) would search on.  That fact that they are being awarded at all means that they must be the search that was used to find the image.   

Since you gave away this valuable info, I can share something back: my Scandinavian tower cakes have been bought several times using the keyword "kransekake". Time to go entering Norwegian keywords for all the other images too.

Oh, and a while ago Dreamstime refused to let me use locality names in keywords for a series with children on top of a mountain. About 20% of the sales on SS are based on keywords such as "Norway", "Andalsnes" and "Rauma". I also see from the map that many of the sales of these pictures are local.

I think you are misinterpreting the information.
I believe it is just information, SS is not awarding points to keywords. They are telling you what percentage of sales came from buyers using that particular keyword. I don't think this affects the best match in any way.
SS is just providing you with a tool to understand how buyers are searching.

steve

How do you account for a image with one sale and results attributed to 3 different words?

Oh thanks now you gave away my Moose secret, sold when people searched for Moose... And no I'm not making this up. I wondered what word was selling that image and now I know it was always just plain Moose.

I suppose Moose uploads will spike now and everyone else knows it's a popular search? LOL