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Author Topic: Alamy strange keywording requirements  (Read 31628 times)

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Ron

« Reply #50 on: July 05, 2013, 06:57 »
+1
I have to add plurals??

Guess, I need to back in and add more keywords.

:(
And spelling differences


ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #51 on: July 06, 2013, 02:35 »
0
I have to add plurals??

Guess, I need to back in and add more keywords.

:(
And spelling differences
And it couldn't do any harm to put in translations of important keywords, especially if significant of your culture and the local word is different from the English word. AFAIK, Alamy doesn't translate keywords.

Uncle Pete

« Reply #52 on: July 08, 2013, 20:17 »
0
Yes, Alamy search is totally literal and not intuitive at all. You must add plurals.

Yes, words together are weighted more heavily than just existing in the same keywords. No "doesn't do anything" and neither does the proposed [words here] brackets.

Yes the word order matters, first words are stronger than later words.

Alamy has yet again changed the search. First they dropped Description, then swapped around what showed, now they dropped Location.

Here's the simplest breakdown of keyword/searchrank. That doesn't explain how much Very High is more than High? 25%, 50%, 10%?

Essential = Very High
Main = High
Comprehensive = Medium
Caption = Low

According to Alamy... Word order and Proximity count. Same three words "Red Dog Walking" searched, would in theory show in this order in the search.

1) Red Dog Walking across bridge
2) Red haired man walking dog across bridge
3) Boat under walking bridge man rowing barking dog lady red dress

#1 has all three words in the right order, close together. #2 has all three words, wrong order, but close together #3 all three words, all wrong order, divided by many other words. All have the same three words. Add in that if the same three words are in different fields, it changes the order and power.

The search isn't as dumb as some people try to make it out to be. It finds what you search for. Good search words = better results. Yes it will find ALL words. What would someone want, to have the search NOT find words that the artist put in the keywords?

You have a really key, important, keyword, put it first in Essential. Have two or three words that go together? Put them together.

I honestly think the system at Alamy combats spam and penalizes people who pump up their keywords with fluff. I don't particularly care or watch CTR, because it's the result not the cause. There could be 10 other reasons why people aren't clicking images, besides keywords. Like composition, colors, contents, specifics, location, mistakes... and the photo isn't what they wanted. Blaming it all on keywords is a bit short sighted.


I have to add plurals??

Guess, I need to back in and add more keywords.

:(

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #53 on: July 09, 2013, 03:42 »
0
Yes, Alamy search is totally literal and not intuitive at all. You must add plurals.
It's perfectly logical/intuitive to search for e.g. 'horses' or 'four horses'.

KB

« Reply #54 on: July 09, 2013, 09:43 »
0
Yes, Alamy search is totally literal and not intuitive at all. You must add plurals.
It's perfectly logical/intuitive to search for e.g. 'horses' or 'four horses'.
Yes, but many other agencies automatically pluralize keywords, so if you keyword only 'horse' it will still match when someone searches for 'horses'. But not all do, so this isn't that unusual, just irksome.

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #55 on: July 09, 2013, 09:59 »
0
Yes, Alamy search is totally literal and not intuitive at all. You must add plurals.
It's perfectly logical/intuitive to search for e.g. 'horses' or 'four horses'.
Yes, but many other agencies automatically pluralize keywords, so if you keyword only 'horse' it will still match when someone searches for 'horses'. But not all do, so this isn't that unusual, just irksome.
The problem with the CV on iS (of which I'm a huge fan) is that when you type 'horses' it reverts to 'horse' and you get a lot of single horse photos. So the searcher has to qualify it with a number or 'many'. Why hack off a buyer?
SS search 'horses' also has a lot of single horse images;  DT is much better: most 'horses' have >1 horse; Alamy has some single horse images in a search for 'horses', and some quite surprising-until-you-see-the-caption images, but mostly multiple horses.

KB

« Reply #56 on: July 09, 2013, 11:36 »
0
SS search 'horses' also has a lot of single horse images;  DT is much better: most 'horses' have >1 horse; Alamy has some single horse images in a search for 'horses', and some quite surprising-until-you-see-the-caption images, but mostly multiple horses.
SS is one of those agencies that pluralizes keywords. (In fact, if you include both the singular and plural versions of a keyword when submitting, it automatically removes one of them.) DT, OTOH, does nothing special with plurals, IIRC.

But I can see what you mean about making it more difficult to search for exactly what you are looking for.

Uncle Pete

« Reply #57 on: July 10, 2013, 11:46 »
0
Yes I agree and it can be an advantage when the HUMAN does the plurals and variations, including us inserting our specific keywords.

What I meant, and may not have been clear about, is this. The Alamy programed search itself, is not intuitive. It does NOT do CV and plurals. Yes, it's fine and intuitive for humans who understand how to use it to be able to control what they get for better results.

The others that are helping, actually can make for worse results in some cases. Some sites you type in "horse" and you get Horses (maybe horseshoe and horsepucky too?) as a feature. Alamy you only get the identical word "Horse".

Meanwhile the idea is, if you want a buyer to find something on Alamy, it has to be there, exactly as they type it. Don't expect the search to interpret and be intuitive, finding partial words or plurals. This could include spelling variations and some people even have included wrong spellings that are common. Saint and St. are different.

Pitfalls in using abbreviations? Some:

ST   Street
ST   State
ST   Saint
ST   Star Trek
ST   Stanza
ST   Short-Time
ST   Start
ST   Spring Training (baseball)
ST   Subject to (math)
ST   Special Training
ST   Science And Technology
ST   Short-Term
ST   Standard Time
ST   Sunday Times (newspaper; various locations)
ST   Stores (on-line ordering and catalog system)
ST   Systems Technology
ST   Student/Teacher
ST   Stone (British weight;14 pounds)
ST   Space Technology

 :)

We could do a whole thread on Color / Colour - Curb / Kerb - Tire / Type Etc. Maybe someone could do a standard translation English to English dictionary?   




Yes, Alamy search is totally literal and not intuitive at all. You must add plurals.

It's perfectly logical/intuitive to search for e.g. 'horses' or 'four horses'.


 

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