Author Topic: Fotolia Search... Am I doing something wrong? (Read 5202 times)

dianajo · « **on:** April 17, 2008, 13:10 »

I get occasional sales at Fotolia which I chalk up to very, very low views on my images. The average is somewhere between 0 and 20, even on images that have been there 6 months or more. The highest views is 93 on an image that has been there over a year.

When I try to search using keywords I know i have in the top 3 of my images, they don't turn up. Obviously some of them eventually turn up, in someone's search but it's starting to really make me wonder.

For instance I have a photo of Arctic Lupine on Fotolia. I'm actually surprised they accepted it, since they seem to hate that type of content.
http://www.fotolia.com/id/3665083 it has one view, which I'm sure is me. It's been there a year. A search for arctic lupine (first keyword, also in title) is "no results found".... what?

A newer photo "Yellow Hard Hat" http://www.fotolia.com/id/7143517 has been there a few days but has 1 view and does not turn up in a search for "Yellow Hard Hat" or "hardhat" or "hard hat". Granted, I don't expect this image to be a top seller, but why on earth isn't it showing in searches?

I have others that are in similar situations and I cannot for the life of me figure it out. They get views & sales everywhere else, the Fotolia key wording mechanism seems to be so vastly different I can't figure it out. Could someone, kindly let me know what I might be doing wrong?

Peter · « **Reply #1 on:** April 17, 2008, 13:26 »

With portfolio size of 83, you can hardly have sales even ig search engine was perfect! That is small number of files, and stock photography is a numbers game. The more you have, the more you sell. Quality is important, but quanity is too.

I know what is the problem, you put multiword keywords, and that screws every keyword in your image. Instead of "arctic lupine" you should put "arctic, lupine".

Every image that has multi-word keywords, has screwed all keywords in it.

jsnover · « **Reply #2 on:** April 17, 2008, 13:27 »

If i search for alaska flower, your image shows up (it isn't all two word searches that are hosed; some work and some don't), so whatever is hosed with fotolia's search is for certain keywords only. I guess the problems show up when the likely keywords a buyer might search on are the "invisible" ones.

With the newer file, it may be that it's a database update problem - all the sites take time for the search engine to catch up with newly approved images. Even on other sites, this can sometimes take days.

My only suggestion is to contact support with the specifics of which keywords find or don't find your image. Other people have said that support does something (never specified what) to "fix" these keyword glitches.

dianajo · « **Reply #3 on:** April 17, 2008, 14:35 »

Thank you jsnover. I appreciate your feedback you've always been helpful in the IS forums. :-) I wondered if the newer one was a database issue, but I figured the databases would update every 24 hours. I will contact support and see if they have

Chode - I never said I expected a bazillion sales. Yes, it's a small port, however other sites perform a lot more consistently for me and my images do turn up in searches. I did not criticize the sales at Fotolia other than to say I thought I was doing something wrong in the keywords because they weren't even getting views. You say two words is an issue, I'll look into that possibility. MS is a side bit that I do when I'm bored or not shooting portraits, models or art. If I take myself out to dinner and a play every few months on MS earnings, it's all good.

Mormegil · « **Reply #4 on:** April 17, 2008, 14:40 »

Fotolia seems to only search for the first 7 keywords on your list. So make sure the most relevant words are at the top.

I neglected this, and just had everything in alphabetical order. Since I've started going back and correcting, my sales have picked up (which I realized this before uploading a thousand images).

madelaide · « **Reply #5 on:** April 17, 2008, 17:27 »

dianajo,

Are the keywords you've mentioned just one composed keyword? I mean, do you have "arctic lipine" or "arctic, lupine"? Because I found the hard way that FT ignores composed keywords.

Regards,
Adelaide

graficallyminded · « **Reply #6 on:** April 18, 2008, 08:00 »

If fotolia's search engine reads only the top 7 words, I wonder why they even accept more than that...does anyone know?

The only other way for the images to be found is through the categories, I would think.

dianajo · « **Reply #7 on:** April 18, 2008, 10:53 »

The key words are set as a phrase, so one line arctic lupine, now this works fine on other sites, and if that is not the case at Fotolia, * I'm going to have to re-keyword everything just for them.

madelaide · « **Reply #8 on:** April 18, 2008, 18:26 »

Quote from: dianajo on April 18, 2008, 10:53

The key words are set as a phrase, so one line arctic lupine, now this works fine on other sites, and if that is not the case at Fotolia, I'm going to have to re-keyword everything just for them.

The thing is: you can't add keywords in FT, and even if you resort them (you can), this doesn't change for search purposes the original first seven.

Yes, it sucks, and I suffer from that too. Now when I upload I "break" the composed keywords. I wished FT would at least to like DT, breaking them automatically when reading the IPTC data.

Regards,
Adelaide

Kerioak · « **Reply #9 on:** April 23, 2008, 03:46 »

Hi

You can only re-sort keywords before submitting them for review, this feature does not work once the images have been submitted

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Author Topic: Fotolia Search... Am I doing something wrong? (Read 5202 times)

dianajo

Peter

jsnover

dianajo

Mormegil

madelaide

graficallyminded

dianajo

madelaide

Kerioak

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