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Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: ribtoks on September 20, 2022, 04:30

Title: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: ribtoks on September 20, 2022, 04:30
Hi

I'm going to do a larger scale study of the keywording on microstocks. Was wondering if folks here have any specific questions about it that I could address in the study?

UPD. Study (part 1) is published now: https://xpiksapp.com/blog/microstock-keywording-analysis/ (https://xpiksapp.com/blog/microstock-keywording-analysis/)
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: Uncle Pete on September 20, 2022, 10:11
Hi

I'm going to do a larger scale study of the keywording on microstocks. Was wondering if folks here have any specific questions about it that I could address in the study?

How many keywords are so redundant that they make no difference, since every image and suggestion tool, includes the same words for similar subjects?

Yes, I'd like to know what keywords are best for generating sales, not how to fill in 50 needless keywords, just because that's more words.  :)

What words do buyers actually use to search for images?

Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: cascoly on September 20, 2022, 13:23
back in symbiostock days i started some keyword analysis since we had data from multiple sites

http://cascoly.com/symbio/symbiostock-keywords.asp (http://cascoly.com/symbio/symbiostock-keywords.asp)

i did some calculations for uniqueness, information value, and relative worth

there was little interest at the time so i didnt refine the calculations
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: f8 on September 20, 2022, 15:27

[/quote]
What words do buyers actually use to search for images?
[/quote]

Probably they use keywords for the content they are looking for. Better to have 20 accurate keywords than get imaginative with keywords that are in effect not relevant to the image AKA keyword spam.

If they want a merlot grape on a vine they will most likely search for "merlot grape vine". So you don't use "wine" as a keyword, yet so many do.

The five W's Who What Where When and Why.

 
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: cascoly on September 20, 2022, 18:37
...

If they want a merlot grape on a vine they will most likely search for "merlot grape vine". So you don't use "wine" as a keyword, yet so many do.

The five W's Who What Where When and Why.

 but you'll lose those who search for 'grapes for wine' 'growing grapes for wine', etc

you need to tag both for a very specific interpretation of the image and how a more general search might interest the buyer.  using 'cat' on a 'dog' image is obviously spam, but including both 'elk' and 'deer' accounts for biologically confused users who just want a pic of a large ruminant
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: ribtoks on September 21, 2022, 00:56
back in symbiostock days i started some keyword analysis since we had data from multiple sites

[url]http://cascoly.com/symbio/symbiostock-keywords.asp[/url] ([url]http://cascoly.com/symbio/symbiostock-keywords.asp[/url])

i did some calculations for uniqueness, information value, and relative worth


Looks very interesting. Thanks for the link!
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: hatman12 on September 21, 2022, 01:27
According to iStock, buyers seldom use the words copyspace, copy space, copy, space for search results.  Buyers choose their images visually.  Including the copyspace words doesn't increase sales and might reduce sales due to too many keywords.

On the other hand including the word photo can increase sales (again according to iStock).  Many buyers are lazy and don't use the drop down search options.  Instead they might search for 'Eiffel Tower Photo' so by including the word photo (for photographers) in both the description and keywords can increase sales.
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: biibii on September 21, 2022, 02:43
It would be interesting to know what to avoid. Excerpt from indivstock insights

Mutually exclusive descriptions, e.g: Winter and summer.
Unclear description of what applies, spring and summer and autumn.
Remove typical non-descriptive words like "high resolution, close up, seamless" if inappropriate.
Remove untrue words like "seamless" if not seamless.
If "young" but not applicable.
If "tourists" but not a person.
If "tourism" but not a typical tourist image.
If "clouds" but not relevant.
If "environment", "business", "concept" but not relevant.
If "isolated" then not "background".
If "artificial" for plants but not as title.
If plural, but 1.
If "garden" but only single plant.
If single plant without name.
Convert symbols such as paragraph, question mark to words.
Remove "'and, the, with, in, at, of, ...".
If "Europe" but not relevant.
If "photography" but not relevant.
If "architecture" but not thematic.
If "decoration, decorative, antique, painting" but not applicable.
If "amazing, aesthetic, ..." but not descriptive.
If "beauty, beautyful,.." but neither woman, women, man, men, person, etc.".
If "beauty, beautyful,..." but animal or plant".
If "Close up images of, ...".
If "Detailed, showing,...".
If "Vector" but not vector.
If "template" but not template.
If "during, seen, view from..." but not matching.
If "group" but not human or clearly "group".
If "nature" but spam.
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: f8 on September 21, 2022, 10:49
...

If they want a merlot grape on a vine they will most likely search for "merlot grape vine". So you don't use "wine" as a keyword, yet so many do.

The five W's Who What Where When and Why.

 but you'll lose those who search for 'grapes for wine' 'growing grapes for wine', etc

you need to tag both for a very specific interpretation of the image and how a more general search might interest the buyer.  using 'cat' on a 'dog' image is obviously spam, but including both 'elk' and 'deer' accounts for biologically confused users who just want a pic of a large ruminant

not if you use an accurate tag of 'wine grapes' or 'wine grape', but point noted. all elk are deer, but not all deer are elk.

this is why I am such a stickler for accuracy in keywords. blunders like the link below are preventable and discredit our entire industry.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/02/rubio-canada-and-the-dangers-of-stock-footage-in-campaign-ads.html



Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: ribtoks on October 03, 2022, 04:20
Happy to share that the study is published! I feel like this is only "part 1" though, as there's just too much data to analyze.

https://xpiksapp.com/blog/microstock-keywording-analysis/ (https://xpiksapp.com/blog/microstock-keywording-analysis/)
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: falantus on October 03, 2022, 06:48
...and might reduce sales due to too many keywords.


Are we sure of this "too many keywords" negativity?  :o
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: derby on October 03, 2022, 14:25
back in symbiostock days i started some keyword analysis since we had data from multiple sites

[url]http://cascoly.com/symbio/symbiostock-keywords.asp[/url] ([url]http://cascoly.com/symbio/symbiostock-keywords.asp[/url])

i did some calculations for uniqueness, information value, and relative worth

there was little interest at the time so i didnt refine the calculations


Thanks for sharing!

In general terms it seems to me that a really accurate keywording should always consider difference between agencies: there will never be one good keywording for all, each one requires single adaptative keywords job.

Probably this can be done for two or three major agencies, not for all
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: cascoly on October 03, 2022, 15:43
great article. 

really surprised by how many images have 45+ keywords.  maybe people are accepting all suggested keywords w/o discrimination. how relevant are 50 keywords for a sliced tomato? on a quick check, my images average 15-25 tags, mostly on the lower end

when you refer to page placement, what tags are being used?
 
keyword count shows about 90% have 40 to 50 tags, but the page 1 boxplot shows 25% have between 30 & 40 tags? interesting that first 6 pages have much bigger spread than lower pages. is keyword spamming reducing placement?

"It does not take to be a data scientist to notice an interesting pattern: low-competition keywords mostly have 2 words while high-competition keywords mostly have 1"
   
more specifically the high comp words are extremely generic, and, re Shannon, contain little information. 

otoh, your example for high ranking shows 
 workteam 35s, make menopause, age gray, facial treatment, insurance afro, girl count, online transfer, older caucasian, workshop training, office benefit, african domestic, enjoy vat, businesswoman profit

again, information theory would predict this high ranking, but how does that ranking convert to actual views (much less sales)? how many times are these tags actually searched?

"It is clear that keyword competitiveness has direct effect into where you will rank. Although it does not guarantee sales, it does get you eyeballs from the customers."


again, page placement does not mean views, so those keywords actually need to be searched for?  how many people will be looking for single keywords like 'background, white,nature,beautiful'?  and subjective values like 'beautiful' really give little information (compared to 'ugly') what would more interesting (but explosive) would be 2-3 words combos: eg "white backround", "green nature"
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: ribtoks on October 04, 2022, 03:27
how many people will be looking for single keywords like 'background, white,nature,beautiful'?  and subjective values like 'beautiful' really give little information (compared to 'ugly') what would more interesting (but explosive) would be 2-3 words combos: eg "white backround", "green nature"

I'll answer to this first. Microstock companies would go out of business if they would only return search results that have keywords that people searched for. Internally they have built their own dictionaries of "concepts" from real life. Like "friendship", "togetherness" etc. and how they are connected to other words. Your keywording just connects your image/video/etc. to the concepts known to microstocks. Then they do the same for what customer searches for - translating to the concepts that they "know" internally. And then by the match of two and also including few dozens of other sales factors (e.g. "frequently brought together" products) they show search results. So it's OK if your keywords "white background" and "green nature" do not describe something exactly what the customer searches. The artwork might still be in the search results based on concept similarity (or proximity).
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: Justanotherphotographer on October 04, 2022, 04:27
According to iStock, buyers seldom use the words copyspace, copy space, copy, space for search results.  Buyers choose their images visually.  Including the copyspace words doesn't increase sales and might reduce sales due to too many keywords.
...

Lol, had a quick look at this. I keep track where I can, using software, of what keywords are used to buy my images. Of keywords for tracked sales my top word has roughly 24000 sales. "copyspace" has...1, "copy" has 12. You are even more correct than I expected.
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: Uncle Pete on October 05, 2022, 11:33
...and might reduce sales due to too many keywords.


Are we sure of this "too many keywords" negativity?  :o

No way to know anything for sure, but views, without zooms or views without sales, or any way that the agency tracks, if someone looks at an image and then moves on, is going to be a negative. Too many keywords is the same as too many irrelevant or unnecessary keywords. I'm sure I do that sometimes, things like nature, scenic, beautiful, which aren't "bad" words or words that shouldn't be there, but do they add anything to the search quality?

Someone who wants an image, if they are at all intelligent, will find words that describe what they want. They aren't going to be doing two word searches that bring up thousands of images, which are all kinds of vague hits.

As an example:
- 100.00% compensation with massive increase in views due to Google, in proportion.
- 100.00% compensation, with massive increase in views but no download, in proportion, without Google.
+ 10.00% Image has just been downloaded and is not free.
+ 2.00% Image has just been downloaded and is free.
- 3.00% unnecessary keywords, number of keywords greater than necessary.
- 5.00% Title and keywords do not match.
- 1.00% keywords contradict each other e.g.: "background" and "isolated".
- 5.00% keywords contradict each other very strongly e.g.: photo of a woman but keyword "men".

Views without a download, will reduce the image rank. Which means if there are poor or irrelevant keywords and the image gets many views, but no sales, it will eventually drop down in rank. In effect if keywords are not a good selection or the descriptions are not well written, the image will drop in rank. Too many unnecessary  or vague words will hurt the image rank.

I think the only place I can see keywords used for downloads is SS. (I could be wrong, AS, AL, IS are my others) Some images are a real surprise in that, the same keywords are used to find them and make sales. Often less than 10 words. Of course we wouldn't want to take a chance that possibly someone might use one of the other words. But reality says, most images, that I have sold, have the same "good" keywords that buyers looked for. If I see that I can also add those words to others in the future.

I am also in the 20-30 keywords numbers. Not because I limit them, or that I couldn't have an image with 49, but just because they don't apply. Personally I don't think fluffing up the numbers does anything to help downloads and from evidence from sites that give us advice, could very likely harm image rank.

Words that add value and information for a buyer, so they will see my image, are what I try to include. Words that are just general words, that almost any image could have, aren't useful.
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: falantus on October 05, 2022, 11:58
...and might reduce sales due to too many keywords.


Are we sure of this "too many keywords" negativity?  :o

No way to know anything for sure, but views, without zooms or views without sales, or any way that the agency tracks, if someone looks at an image and then moves on, is going to be a negative. Too many keywords is the same as too many irrelevant or unnecessary keywords. I'm sure I do that sometimes, things like nature, scenic, beautiful, which aren't "bad" words or words that shouldn't be there, but do they add anything to the search quality?

Someone who wants an image, if they are at all intelligent, will find words that describe what they want. They aren't going to be doing two word searches that bring up thousands of images, which are all kinds of vague hits.

As an example:
- 100.00% compensation with massive increase in views due to Google, in proportion.
- 100.00% compensation, with massive increase in views but no download, in proportion, without Google.
+ 10.00% Image has just been downloaded and is not free.
+ 2.00% Image has just been downloaded and is free.
- 3.00% unnecessary keywords, number of keywords greater than necessary.
- 5.00% Title and keywords do not match.
- 1.00% keywords contradict each other e.g.: "background" and "isolated".
- 5.00% keywords contradict each other very strongly e.g.: photo of a woman but keyword "men".

Views without a download, will reduce the image rank. Which means if there are poor or irrelevant keywords and the image gets many views, but no sales, it will eventually drop down in rank. In effect if keywords are not a good selection or the descriptions are not well written, the image will drop in rank. Too many unnecessary  or vague words will hurt the image rank.

I think the only place I can see keywords used for downloads is SS. (I could be wrong, AS, AL, IS are my others) Some images are a real surprise in that, the same keywords are used to find them and make sales. Often less than 10 words. Of course we wouldn't want to take a chance that possibly someone might use one of the other words. But reality says, most images, that I have sold, have the same "good" keywords that buyers looked for. If I see that I can also add those words to others in the future.

I am also in the 20-30 keywords numbers. Not because I limit them, or that I couldn't have an image with 49, but just because they don't apply. Personally I don't think fluffing up the numbers does anything to help downloads and from evidence from sites that give us advice, could very likely harm image rank.

Words that add value and information for a buyer, so they will see my image, are what I try to include. Words that are just general words, that almost any image could have, aren't useful.

Thank you for this informative response. This is really great reasoning, and firmly convincing. I haven't thought about image rank issue because of view/download ratio, but it is a logical explanation. I would have designed it if ı had a stock company  ;D So far, I preferred to put max amount of keywords but I think I won't do it from now on. Still, there is something making me curious on this issue. I wonder if some of my low quality images were sold because of those unrelated keywords or absence of that kind of images around. Of course we can't be sure of it. Just brainstorming.
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: [email protected] on October 06, 2022, 09:19
Hi @Ribtoks - this sounds really interesting (saw the thread through the Micro Stock Group newsletter - I'm not on this forum usually). There may be some insights I can share from my own research. If you're interested email me [email protected] (my site is www.clemency.co.uk (http://www.clemency.co.uk) if you want to know more about what I do with Keywords).
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: Uncle Pete on October 06, 2022, 12:06
...and might reduce sales due to too many keywords.


Are we sure of this "too many keywords" negativity?  :o

No way to know anything for sure, but views, without zooms or views without sales, or any way that the agency tracks, if someone looks at an image and then moves on, is going to be a negative. Too many keywords is the same as too many irrelevant or unnecessary keywords. I'm sure I do that sometimes, things like nature, scenic, beautiful, which aren't "bad" words or words that shouldn't be there, but do they add anything to the search quality?

Someone who wants an image, if they are at all intelligent, will find words that describe what they want. They aren't going to be doing two word searches that bring up thousands of images, which are all kinds of vague hits.

As an example:
- 100.00% compensation with massive increase in views due to Google, in proportion.
- 100.00% compensation, with massive increase in views but no download, in proportion, without Google.
+ 10.00% Image has just been downloaded and is not free.
+ 2.00% Image has just been downloaded and is free.
- 3.00% unnecessary keywords, number of keywords greater than necessary.
- 5.00% Title and keywords do not match.
- 1.00% keywords contradict each other e.g.: "background" and "isolated".
- 5.00% keywords contradict each other very strongly e.g.: photo of a woman but keyword "men".

Views without a download, will reduce the image rank. Which means if there are poor or irrelevant keywords and the image gets many views, but no sales, it will eventually drop down in rank. In effect if keywords are not a good selection or the descriptions are not well written, the image will drop in rank. Too many unnecessary  or vague words will hurt the image rank.

I think the only place I can see keywords used for downloads is SS. (I could be wrong, AS, AL, IS are my others) Some images are a real surprise in that, the same keywords are used to find them and make sales. Often less than 10 words. Of course we wouldn't want to take a chance that possibly someone might use one of the other words. But reality says, most images, that I have sold, have the same "good" keywords that buyers looked for. If I see that I can also add those words to others in the future.

I am also in the 20-30 keywords numbers. Not because I limit them, or that I couldn't have an image with 49, but just because they don't apply. Personally I don't think fluffing up the numbers does anything to help downloads and from evidence from sites that give us advice, could very likely harm image rank.

Words that add value and information for a buyer, so they will see my image, are what I try to include. Words that are just general words, that almost any image could have, aren't useful.

Thank you for this informative response. This is really great reasoning, and firmly convincing. I haven't thought about image rank issue because of view/download ratio, but it is a logical explanation. I would have designed it if ı had a stock company  ;D So far, I preferred to put max amount of keywords but I think I won't do it from now on. Still, there is something making me curious on this issue. I wonder if some of my low quality images were sold because of those unrelated keywords or absence of that kind of images around. Of course we can't be sure of it. Just brainstorming.

None of us can be positive of anything, unless we wrote the image rank conditions. I still remember someone who told me their images sold better with 50 keywords, and I asked have you tried less? "No, I always use 50 keywords" Also the images and video were wonderful, really pretty, colorful, high resolution images.

My answer is, good images sell more often, because they are good images, and not because someone is tricking the system.

As for views, zooms and downloads, that's Alamy, and they clearly stated how part of image rank was determined. It's kind of silly for any of us to think that some single variable or number of words is so critical for making sales or not. To which I must admit, if you like more words, why not add them? My personal opinion is, they don't help and could hurt, but lacking serious documentation and evidence, I can only say, that's what I do, and why I think it could be true.

Absolutely, brainstorming is good and I'm not really trying to convince anyone, we each can do what they want. I just see the information, that I have seen, points to keywords are just a small part of things. More isn't going to make a bad image, better or make it sell more. Adobe has said that image size matters. They only feature the first keywords as important. Others don't tell us. Some have said that description is very important as well. Who sits and thinks, I'm allowed 250 characters for description, I must use all the words?  ;D

Without all the unknowns and personal views, a good description and appropriate image related keywords will do more for any of us than just more is better. I've been a minimalist and it could be that I'm just lazy. LESS IS MORE.

Spam keywords or contradictions, could very likely harm image rank. It wouldn't make sense for an agency to just go with the flow and not filter the results, which means buyers have a better experience and see better related images. I have 18 images on page one of a two work search. On the other hand, I have some sets of words that I used to drop into every motorsports image. I've never found some of these words, used as a search term for a sale, anywhere.

I'm thinking of editing the list down to the ones that have been used at least one time? But as you say, who knows.

action, auto, automobile, autosport, car, champcar, championship, circuit, compete, competition, driver, driving, event, extreme, fast, formula, grand, indycar, irl, machine, motor, motorcar, motorshow, motorsport, night, open, prix, race, racetrack, raceway, racing, rivalry, road, speed, speedway, sport, sportscar, technology, track, transportation, vehicle, wheel

Nope I don't know, I just have my feelings and personal opinions. 👍

What would you say about this set of keywords that could bring an image down. I don't have the image and I guess I shouldn't show it if I did. 16 words that don't really need to be there or aren't in the image. "party, party hard, pattern, cheers, drop" ? I can see some as concepts, like celebration, make a splash or refreshing. But are graphic or object something that adds value to the search terms?

(https://i.postimg.cc/tJt4CCLZ/keywords-splashing-blue-wine-SS.jpg)
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: Uncle Pete on October 06, 2022, 12:37
Thank you for this informative response. This is really great reasoning, and firmly convincing. I haven't thought about image rank issue because of view/download ratio, but it is a logical explanation. I would have designed it if ı had a stock company  ;D So far, I preferred to put max amount of keywords but I think I won't do it from now on. Still, there is something making me curious on this issue. I wonder if some of my low quality images were sold because of those unrelated keywords or absence of that kind of images around. Of course we can't be sure of it. Just brainstorming.

I wanted to go off into some related side question. Do you ever upload images, that you think, no one will ever download? I do.  :o

Absence of other images, that are an unusual subject, or little covered subject is a good GREAT idea, again personally. Why shoot sliced vegetables when there are 2 million already. And yes they aren't all just sliced vegetables, some are keywords with an ingredient in the stew or salad. Fair enough.

How about Ollie bollen? I have two images and someone else has three. Actually got a download and they are both plop shoot and eat. 194 chunky pasta sauce - really? and half of them aren't pasta sauce. 102 blue jay looking at camera, but 22,503 blue jay stock photos. Specifics matter. Like, 4 big chicken Marietta Ga. and two are mine!  8) None of the above were downloaded because they had 50 keywords. They were sold because they had an unusual subject.

If I wasn't having fun, I wouldn't do this at all. Too much work for the minimal returns.

And I even have a sliced tomato that I uploaded this year, just to have one.

(https://as2.ftcdn.net/jpg/04/25/61/23/220_F_425612367_I9kMbHVIBZFxu743QqN2b4jKSXlNB3VJ.jpg)
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: stoker2014 on October 06, 2022, 14:22
Stock agencies may well promote certain authors and their works by themselves, manually, or using algorithms known to them. And then it doesn't matter what tags you put.
All this reasoning about the number of tags and rankings is interesting, but how to put it all into practice? We need a special service in which it would be possible to search for a similar image or plot, and for this service to give both the name and tags, and for it to decide whether 50 tags are needed or enough, for example, 5 or 25.
I have no idea how to do it right, I can only focus on the tags of competitors.
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: falantus on October 07, 2022, 02:47
My answer is, good images sell more often, because they are good images, and not because someone is tricking the system.
No objection. Agree with this.

Some have said that description is very important as well. Who sits and thinks, I'm allowed 250 characters for description, I must use all the words?  ;D
In the past, I was filling the entire 200-250 characters but a kind Getty editor got back to me and said don’t bother, it’s not indexed by explaining the system basics. After that, I minimized the title to 1/3 long, good enough to cover the basic description. 😊 However, Shutterstock or Adobe might follow a different system, can’t be sure. So “LESS IS MORE” should be true :)

What would you say about this set of keywords that could bring an image down. I don't have the image and I guess I shouldn't show it if I did. 16 words that don't really need to be there or aren't in the image. "party, party hard, pattern, cheers, drop" ? I can see some as concepts, like celebration, make a splash or refreshing. But are graphic or object something that adds value to the search terms?
Yes true. That’s where I sometimes omitted before, I guess. That’s because almost every image has its nature so it pushes you to consume time for that almost-uniqueness, at least with 5-10 extra words. Too much effort. That would cause you to follow themes and schemes but it seems now a wrong strategy. You shoot, you edit, you find the name and with that kind of keywording, it would be in vain. Just thinking aloud :P

I wanted to go off into some related side question. Do you ever upload images, that you think, no one will ever download? I do.  :o
Likewise. :D And interestingly, some unexpected ones sell, that’s why I don’t close that door ever. I experienced some noisy, low resolution, blurry images sold.

If I wasn't having fun, I wouldn't do this at all. Too much work for the minimal returns.
Same. I haven’t earned anything valuable so far to be honest. Some minimum wage jobs could have provided for more money so far but the nature of this “work field” satisfies my inner feelings. Maybe that’s why I continue to consume my time. You can understand this better 😊
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: ribtoks on October 07, 2022, 03:50
Someone who wants an image, if they are at all intelligent, will find words that describe what they want.

Have you ever searched for an image to buy yourself? I can tell you that it's hard to find what you want, because frequently you want to illustrate a concept. It was never the case for me, that I knew I need something like is used to generate DALLE images "two men on horses on the moon surface in the Salvador Dali style". I search for a few vague concepts and then from search results that look somewhat plausible get an idea how to find similar things. So in my opinion your argument is not really applicable to customers. For agencies themselves - hard to know.
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: Diana Herrmann on October 07, 2022, 08:53
Someone who wants an image, if they are at all intelligent, will find words that describe what they want.

Have you ever searched for an image to buy yourself? I can tell you that it's hard to find what you want, because frequently you want to illustrate a concept. It was never the case for me, that I knew I need something like is used to generate DALLE images "two men on horses on the moon surface in the Salvador Dali style". I search for a few vague concepts and then from search results that look somewhat plausible get an idea how to find similar things. So in my opinion your argument is not really applicable to customers. For agencies themselves - hard to know.

You are taking an extreme outlining example. What if someone wants "a plate of spaghetti with meatballs and sauce"? People are not looking for "two men on horses on the moon surface in the Salvador Dali style" very often. Most of our sales are from subjects, concepts, objects or specific locations. If I want "a plate of spaghetti with meatballs and sauce" the words that artists should have would be spaghetti, plate, meatballs, sauce. It's not rocket science. The kind of sauce, colors, basil, oregano, fork, table, what is  in the image. You don't need 50 words and you only need what is really in the image.

DT first one that comes up. Title, Plate of spaghetti with meatballs, description, Plate of spaghetti with meatballs in tomato marinara sauce, top view, 21 keywords, meatballs marinara,tomato,spaghetti,plate,view,top,sauce,meatballs,marinara,background,food,cooking,health,table,green,leaf,nutrition,meat,white,healthy,pasta
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: stoker2014 on October 07, 2022, 12:34
Some stocks publish the words that buyers most often search for. So there are not only words, but also phrases. If you take these words and insert them into your work, then you will be found more often.
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: cascoly on October 07, 2022, 12:40
Some stocks publish the words that buyers most often search for. So there are not only words, but also phrases. If you take these words and insert them into your work, then you will be found more often.

search algorithms likely see no difference between tags "red", "flowers" & "red flowers"

main reason to include tag phrases is to disambiguate:  "red river" & "river" rather than "red", "river"
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: cascoly on October 07, 2022, 12:51
.. dupe..
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: Uncle Pete on October 07, 2022, 12:53
Some stocks publish the words that buyers most often search for. So there are not only words, but also phrases. If you take these words and insert them into your work, then you will be found more often.

Which Sites? That would be useful, maybe. I'm kind of out of the usual subjects and words, but it could be good for anyone more mainstream? I'd really like to see what buyers used to buy images, not what random people looked at.

Good point. I should add those words, just because people search for them and trick them into seeing images they aren't looking for? Kind of falls into my "bad keywords" ideas.

The ideal answer for me would be if we got more of what word did a buyer use to find MY image. Alamy does some of that, but it's flawed and I have many with no data. To which Alamy says, they might have must bee browsing, that People do none searches and just browse? I don't think so. I think they have problems with getting the data.

SS interesting and useful as I have found what words people used to download the image. This one I found amusing. It has many downloads by the way.

    amelia
    52.6%
    earhart
    42.1%
    aviatrix
    5.3%

   
This tells me from my grand list for racing, what words buyers actually used. Most of the downloads have the same words, except when they used a specific drivers name or something like NASCAR Truck Series.


    car
    35.4%
    race
    30.4%
    prix
    8.9%
    grand
    8.9%
    formula
    5.1%
    sport
    5.1%
    motorsport
    3.8%
    speedways
    1.3%
    sportscar
    1.3%

No need to add words that buyers don't use? Or should I add, some most searched words, just to be seen, in case someone looking for something, should suddenly get the urge to download a photo of a race car instead?  ::)
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: stoker2014 on October 07, 2022, 13:33
Uncle Pete, no need to spam. If your image matches the words or phrases that buyers are most likely to search for, you insert them into your tags. If not, don't post. Also, according to this data, you will find out what the buyer is looking for, and you can create content for these requests.
It is clear that if your image is from another industry, it will not be bought, and you may be banned for spamming.
https://contributor.pond5.com/2022/09/26/buyer-requests-us-politics-all-saints-day-around-the-world-remembrance-day/
I don’t remember exactly whether Pond5 published every week a list of the most frequently searched words, or shutterstock. Everyone knew this, you could write in support of these sites and they will give links to these pages. But I stopped tracking it, because. every week, buyers searched for different words and phrases. It is a separate big job to monitor these words, and then insert them into your work.
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: stoker2014 on October 07, 2022, 13:42
Some stocks publish the words that buyers most often search for. So there are not only words, but also phrases. If you take these words and insert them into your work, then you will be found more often.

search algorithms likely see no difference between tags "red", "flowers" & "red flowers"

main reason to include tag phrases is to disambiguate:  "red river" & "river" rather than "red", "river"
I used to insert phrases into tags, but by the phrase, the search gave my videos up, exactly by the phrase. If a buyer searches by a phrase, and this phrase is your separate tag, they will see your image first.

p.s. It may be different on different sites.
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: Uncle Pete on October 07, 2022, 13:57
Some stocks publish the words that buyers most often search for. So there are not only words, but also phrases. If you take these words and insert them into your work, then you will be found more often.

Can you say which ones and how I can find these lists? Thanks
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: cascoly on October 07, 2022, 14:40

 ...

SS interesting and useful as I have found what words people used to download the image. This one I found amusing. It has many downloads by the way.

    amelia
    52.6%
    earhart
    42.1%
    aviatrix
    5.3%
...

something we haven't considered is how the buyer found the image - did they go to SS directly? or did they find the image thru google?

for the latter, something is lost - searching for "amelia earhart aviatrix" and clicking on the SS image google found, the link google sent to SS is "https://www.shutterstock.com/search/aviatrix", losing the other words the user entered. (in this case the majority of images happened to be of AE, with a scattering of generic illustrations )
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: stoker2014 on October 08, 2022, 12:01
Some stocks publish the words that buyers most often search for. So there are not only words, but also phrases. If you take these words and insert them into your work, then you will be found more often.

Can you say which ones and how I can find these lists? Thanks
On the site pond5 for photos, videos, vectors you can see. Most likely they are updated every week. This is what most buyers are looking for in the search. If you have these words, then depending on the rating of the image, they will be viewed. I am sure that other stocks also have statistics, and you need to write to support and demand that they report it. So depending on what stock you are interested in.
I am attaching a screenshot, on which you will see how to view popular tags on Pond5.
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: Uncle Pete on October 10, 2022, 13:17

 ...

SS interesting and useful as I have found what words people used to download the image. This one I found amusing. It has many downloads by the way.

    amelia
    52.6%
    earhart
    42.1%
    aviatrix
    5.3%
...

something we haven't considered is how the buyer found the image - did they go to SS directly? or did they find the image thru google?

for the latter, something is lost - searching for "amelia earhart aviatrix" and clicking on the SS image google found, the link google sent to SS is "https://www.shutterstock.com/search/aviatrix", losing the other words the user entered. (in this case the majority of images happened to be of AE, with a scattering of generic illustrations )

That could explain why Alamy has so many with no words searched. The buyer came from offsite and didn't use the search.

Which is a reminder why good Titles/Captions/Descriptions are so important.  :)

So the fact that "amelia earhart aviatrix" adds up to 100%, only applies to searches that came from inside SS, or partners, or someplace directly connected. To know if that 100% was what percentage of the sales, they would also have to tell me how many were used, to calculate the percentages and I could see if the numbers were equal, before I conclude that only the three words shown were used. Fair enough. But I will say, that when 100% is 100% and it's only three words, I think I have some sort of math evidence as well?

Just for fun, some of the deeper keywords that I have added to some images, things where I'm on the top half of the page, with six images, I have no sales showing that anyone ever used that word or another very specific term, to find and buy an image. So much for my great deep thinking and using a thesaurus.

Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: stoker2014 on October 11, 2022, 13:40
Here every month information is updated on tags, phrases, topics that buyers are looking for. Go to the section you need and see the statistics.
https://contributor.pond5.com/data-trends/
Title: Re: Anything you would like to know about keywording?
Post by: Uncle Pete on October 12, 2022, 12:59
Pond5 Photo

horror
+ 252.00 %
baby
- 2.96 %
meditation
+ 128.57 %
kitchen
- 4.48 %
nature landscape
+ 120.69 %
buy
- 5.88 %
scary
+ 25.79 %
cars
- 15.58 %
Christmas
+ 7.69 %
abstract
- 31.91 %
American flag
+ 5.79 %
download
- 32.99 %

Seems pretty sensible for Halloween, Autumn, and Christmas coming up.