it is stated by fotolia's forum moderators that reordering doesn't change anything. you have to get it right before you hit submit

Not sure that's true, but can't quite figure out what. Here is an experiment I tried.

Took one image and searched by four words close to the bottom of the list. It brought up 2 pages but not mine. I move all 4 to the top of the list. Searched using those words in order, same result. I took one of the words out of the search and my image came up first. Not sure what that means.

Another image, searched on 5 words from the bottom of the list, no results. Moved 2 to the top and did the same search, no results. Moved all 5 to the top and did same search. not in the order as in the list, my image came up as only one.

Not sure of how the test helps, other than you can reorder after uploading and it was worth the effort.

I wonder if you can provide a link to that post?

this is the main one, there are a few others as well, with titles 'keywords' etc

http://www.fotolia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=9570

very simply,

first 7 keywords count (although I do have a few images that use words after the 7, and images that dont use within the 7  )
changing the order after it has been submitted has no effect as there database is not reindexed.  You have to contact support if you want this done. (however they just asked me to supply every image number that is a problem with examples of searches for each image that I felt they should appear within - for 2000 images (I had told them 2000 images - so am rewording my request and asking again)
Images may only be submitted once according to fotolia, so even delete and resubmit is apparently not acceptable - apparently people are being told no on resubmit as it has been on before.

and of course they have tighter standards now, since their competition was announced my acceptance  dropped to around 50%.  and my last batch which was just after having a complain about the keyword situation I had 2 out of 20 accepted (19 of 20 at 123 and ss, 20 of 20 most other places, images refused for technical quality that istock have accepted???) maybe just coincidence???

basically their view is, get it right first time. (even though when you look at one of your images at the top "It's one of your files, you can index it" this puts you to the edit data screen where you have the reorder keywords.  Just another broken bit of the site?)