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Author Topic: Keyword spamming at Fotolia  (Read 12688 times)

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« on: February 16, 2013, 17:33 »
+1
I'm shocked about the list of the keywords of this image:
http://us.fotolia.com/id/49296327
and also about the other keywords from this portfolio...
I remember, 1-2 years ago, almost all the agencies became very upset on keyword spamming... Except FL?


« Reply #1 on: February 16, 2013, 17:37 »
0
Easter apple background bag beauty cheese cooking countryside cube cuisine dinner dish drink egg eggs fatty flour fruits garlic greasy health heap hole home isolated lettuce long market meat mess milk mustard pasta restaurant sandwich shop shopping smoked spring straw summer tomato vegetables water wet white wine

should be:

Easter cooking cuisine egg eggs fatty health

(and even these)

« Reply #2 on: February 16, 2013, 17:45 »
0
I like the fact he/she is selling the EL for the same price as the biggest size :D

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #3 on: February 16, 2013, 17:54 »
+1
I'm shocked about the list of the keywords of this image:
http://us.fotolia.com/id/49296327
and also about the other keywords from this portfolio...
I remember, 1-2 years ago, almost all the agencies became very upset on keyword spamming... Except FL?

The agencies made a noise about keywording, but ignorance and spamming goes on at all of them nevertheless.
Ultimately, a clean search will be a USP.

« Reply #4 on: February 16, 2013, 18:06 »
0
The agencies made a noise about keywording, but ignorance and spamming goes on at all of them nevertheless.

Ok, we all make mistakes when keywording. In the worst case, let's say 6-8 keywords remain from a previous image... And this for several images...
But it's too much to include mainly unrelated keywords... And for EVERY image in the portfolio...

fritz

  • I love Tom and Jerry music

« Reply #5 on: February 16, 2013, 20:00 »
+1
You Know What Bothers Me? Sold today EL 4200 x 2800 for 2.5$. I mean who cares about FT and their keywords.

OM

« Reply #6 on: February 16, 2013, 20:06 »
+1
As long as keyword spamming goes 'unpunished', it remains profitable in the mind (and maybe in sales) of the offender.
Can't find 'em now but there have been images at FT (from Japanese contributors) that contained 200 keywords whereas there's supposed to be a limit of 50.

« Reply #7 on: February 16, 2013, 20:07 »
+1
You Know What Bothers Me? Sold today EL 4200 x 2800 for 2.5$. I mean who cares about FT and their keywords.

and why? because FT has that bug for 10000 days, how hard is to keep the default price for EL as we leave it before?

OM

« Reply #8 on: February 16, 2013, 20:13 »
+2
You Know What Bothers Me? Sold today EL 4200 x 2800 for 2.5$. I mean who cares about FT and their keywords.

With every submission to FT you have to adjust your EL price. FT sets it at 10 as standard but you have to manually change it for every image submitted to avoid selling an EL for $2.50 to you.
I set all of mine to $70 which means I get 25% on a sale.........but then again, I never sell EL's at FT.

tab62

« Reply #9 on: February 16, 2013, 20:56 »
0
With every submission to FT you have to adjust your EL price. FT sets it at 10 as standard but you have to manually change it for every image submitted to avoid selling an EL for $2.50 to you.
I set all of mine to $70 which means I get 25% on a sale.........but then again, I never sell EL's at FT.

Ditto! I have sold three EL's FT at $50 thus getting 23% (11.50 each) thus make sure you replace the default $10 for EL...

hotwalkn

  • ...I have a lens fetish...

« Reply #10 on: February 16, 2013, 23:40 »
0
How do you manage to set yours to $70? Mine has a cap at $20  :-\

« Reply #11 on: February 16, 2013, 23:44 »
0

hotwalkn

  • ...I have a lens fetish...

« Reply #12 on: February 16, 2013, 23:45 »
0
That would explain it..... :P

OM

« Reply #13 on: February 17, 2013, 08:06 »
-1
That would explain it..... :P

Sorry. Forgot to say that I'm 'silver' there and could put 100 credits on an EL. I choose for 70 cuz I've a generous nature. ;)

« Reply #14 on: February 17, 2013, 10:38 »
0
There is outragous spam everywhere - sites allow too many keywords

red

« Reply #15 on: February 17, 2013, 11:34 »
0
Speaking generally across the micros - people get mad when their keywords are questioned or reported. Too much copy and paste from similar images is allowed and/or non-english speaking contributors have problems not always of their making. Short of assigning people to keyword every image much like they review them I see no easy fix. If it was done that way there would be even more complaints.

« Reply #16 on: February 17, 2013, 12:04 »
+1
Easter apple background bag beauty cheese cooking countryside cube cuisine dinner dish drink egg eggs fatty flour fruits garlic greasy health heap hole home isolated lettuce long market meat mess milk mustard pasta restaurant sandwich shop shopping smoked spring straw summer tomato vegetables water wet white wine

should be:

Easter cooking cuisine egg eggs fatty health

(and even these)

It's also odd that they are missing some of the obvious words like Yolk, Shell, Cracked, Close Up, Brown, Yellow.

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #17 on: February 17, 2013, 12:46 »
0
Easter apple background bag beauty cheese cooking countryside cube cuisine dinner dish drink egg eggs fatty flour fruits garlic greasy health heap hole home isolated lettuce long market meat mess milk mustard pasta restaurant sandwich shop shopping smoked spring straw summer tomato vegetables water wet white wine

should be:

Easter cooking cuisine egg eggs fatty health

(and even these)

I wouldn't use Easter, cooking, cuising, fatty or probably health.
OTOH, I have no idea what Fotolia's keywording standards are: maybe they're very loose.

« Reply #18 on: February 17, 2013, 12:58 »
0
Easter apple background bag beauty cheese cooking countryside cube cuisine dinner dish drink egg eggs fatty flour fruits garlic greasy health heap hole home isolated lettuce long market meat mess milk mustard pasta restaurant sandwich shop shopping smoked spring straw summer tomato vegetables water wet white wine

should be:

Easter cooking cuisine egg eggs fatty health

(and even these)

I wouldn't use Easter, cooking, cuising, fatty or probably health.
OTOH, I have no idea what Fotolia's keywording standards are: maybe they're very loose.

sure I was looking for the less bad ;)

about agencies being loose, all beside iStock, sometimes CanStockPhoto one or two

« Reply #19 on: February 18, 2013, 15:43 »
+2
As long as keyword spamming goes 'unpunished', it remains profitable in the mind (and maybe in sales) of the offender.

For sure, I agree (joking, NOT cynical). It's highly profitable for the contributor alone, and also, if others does not spam - IMHO.
The problem arises when
- other contributor's images are placed far from the first pages due to spamming
- buyers who really want to find something and have no option 'don't show this image anymore' option, see the same image when searching different terms...

I'm a buyer sometimes and I'm struggling to filter out some aggressively upcoming images I just don't want to see anymore...

A strict keyword policy is very good for an agency, it helps a lot the buyers to find exactly what they want, not just browse the huge mess again and again...
I think, the loose keyword policy and the slow page loads is responsible for the huge earnings drop at FL...
« Last Edit: February 18, 2013, 15:55 by icefront »

« Reply #20 on: February 18, 2013, 15:53 »
+1
Easter apple background bag beauty cheese cooking countryside cube cuisine dinner dish drink egg eggs fatty flour fruits garlic greasy health heap hole home isolated lettuce long market meat mess milk mustard pasta restaurant sandwich shop shopping smoked spring straw summer tomato vegetables water wet white wine

should be:

Easter cooking cuisine egg eggs fatty health

(and even these)

I wouldn't use Easter, cooking, cuising, fatty or probably health.
OTOH, I have no idea what Fotolia's keywording standards are: maybe they're very loose.
Let me complete the list of the keywords and comments (just to be academic):
egg, eggs, whole, broken, yolk, yellow, half, raw, ...
I would not include:
- easter. Who want to find egg (for any reason) will type 'egg' or 'eggs'. Question is, it's good to show some ordinary, raw eggs when searching 'easter'?
- cooking, cuisine: there's no cooking on the image, and also eggs are not necessarily connected to cooking! No kitchen also
- health. It depends on the person, for some folks, eggs are really not healthy
- fat, fatty. Does not relate to eggs
« Last Edit: February 18, 2013, 16:01 by icefront »

« Reply #21 on: February 18, 2013, 16:03 »
+1
That is clearly keyword spamming, or could even be a copy/paste mistake but either way the inspectors should have noticed it. I find also a lot of the time many non native English speaking contributors are the culprits. But when you have foreign inspectors also with a poor command of the English language then there is no chance :)

OM

« Reply #22 on: February 18, 2013, 19:34 »
+2
As long as keyword spamming goes 'unpunished', it remains profitable in the mind (and maybe in sales) of the offender.

For sure, I agree (joking, NOT cynical). It's highly profitable for the contributor alone, and also, if others does not spam - IMHO.
The problem arises when
- other contributor's images are placed far from the first pages due to spamming
- buyers who really want to find something and have no option 'don't show this image anymore' option, see the same image when searching different terms...

I'm a buyer sometimes and I'm struggling to filter out some aggressively upcoming images I just don't want to see anymore...

A strict keyword policy is very good for an agency, it helps a lot the buyers to find exactly what they want, not just browse the huge mess again and again...
I think, the loose keyword policy and the slow page loads is responsible for the huge earnings drop at FL...

I agree absolutely about spamming making life hell for the buyer. I am also an occasional buyer as well as contributor and the FT search is just horrendous because of spamming and other really annoying quirks.
One example was a search for golf clubs. Depending on my search entry, 'golfclub', 'golfclubs', 'golf club' or 'golf clubs', I got 4 completely different results; varying from ~70 results for the incorrectly spelled 'golfclubs' plural to 16,000 for the correctly spelled 'golf club' which of course the search enters as 2 separate words. Whilst on the subject of golf enter the word 'tee' and you get a load of images of 'tea' because some (presumably German-speaking contributors) have entered 'tee' when they mean 'tea'. Some months ago I entered 'tee' and actually got images of 'tea' with only 'tea' in the keywords. That suggested to me that even their algorithm was confused by the various languages! That latter problem does, however, seem to have been fixed since then.

Perhaps FT doesn't realise that silly search and allowing excessive keyword spamming will eventually drive customers away.

« Reply #23 on: February 21, 2013, 13:15 »
0
http://us.fotolia.com/id/48868177

how can they feature a pic at their homepage and then offer EL for 10$, at least tell the contributor NO? ::)

« Reply #24 on: February 21, 2013, 13:57 »
+1
Most spam produce the automatic translation function on Fotolia  (and at other agencies as well). As a native German speaker, I write my keywords on Fotolia in German - sometimes the translator generates absolute nonsense.

OM

« Reply #25 on: February 21, 2013, 17:48 »
0
http://us.fotolia.com/id/48868177

how can they feature a pic at their homepage and then offer EL for 10$, at least tell the contributor NO? ::)


Caveat venditor! Take the time when doing submissions to change each EL separately by hand. A diabolical trick by FT.

Edit: Dunno if anyone knows how to get in touch with 'Konrad Bak' or whatever his name is but I think that he doesn't realise that he's being 'swindled' in this way. All his work 'pre-ELrobbery' at FT is priced at 100 for an EL. All recent work (594 files) is priced at 10. Methinks it was not his intention to give EL's away for less than the price of an 'M' sized file!
« Last Edit: February 21, 2013, 19:44 by OM »

« Reply #26 on: March 08, 2013, 11:50 »
0
http://us.fotolia.com/id/48868177

how can they feature a pic at their homepage and then offer EL for 10$, at least tell the contributor NO? ::)


Caveat venditor! Take the time when doing submissions to change each EL separately by hand. A diabolical trick by FT.

Edit: Dunno if anyone knows how to get in touch with 'Konrad Bak' or whatever his name is but I think that he doesn't realise that he's being 'swindled' in this way. All his work 'pre-ELrobbery' at FT is priced at 100 for an EL. All recent work (594 files) is priced at 10. Methinks it was not his intention to give EL's away for less than the price of an 'M' sized file!


I found konradbak at dreamstime and commented one image with the warning about the EL price. If he read the comment now can fix this mistake.

« Reply #27 on: March 09, 2013, 18:12 »
0
Most spam produce the automatic translation function on Fotolia  (and at other agencies as well). As a native German speaker, I write my keywords on Fotolia in German - sometimes the translator generates absolute nonsense.

Exactly. I agree with every word, except "sometimes", lol!

As long as keyword spamming goes 'unpunished', it remains profitable in the mind (and maybe in sales) of the offender.
Can't find 'em now but there have been images at FT (from Japanese contributors) that contained 200 keywords whereas there's supposed to be a limit of 50.

That's due to the translation as well. I think one word is often translated into many.

« Reply #28 on: March 13, 2013, 16:58 »
0
I saw that he had fixed the price with 50 credit instead 10, so at the end he read the message.
But say thank no?
However Fotolia with this get -1.

« Reply #29 on: March 13, 2013, 17:08 »
0
I saw that he had fixed the price with 50 credit instead 10, so at the end he read the message.
But say thank no?
However Fotolia with this get -1.

Who in their right mind would give their stuff away for 50 credits when they have the option to price them higher?  All that does is encourage buyers to look for 50 or less credit images and further cheapens our work. I get the logic: "It helps me sell more images because they are more affordable compared to other images priced at 100".  I would disagree with this logic, however.  If a buyer finds the right image they will buy it, 50 or 100 credits.  I had two crappy, old D100 images sell for 100 credits last month on FT, and I would put those under "my old dusty computer collection from a long time ago when MS started", yet they still sold for 100 credits.

« Reply #30 on: March 13, 2013, 17:44 »
0
Yes Mantis I agree with you and I thought the same things, but at least 50 credit is better than 2. However I deleted some time ago the photos in Fotolia and also don't knew this change of terms. So Fotolia -1; and konrad maybe a day understand that his staff can value more than 50 credit, at least I hope.


 

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