Suddenly my most popular and most recent images on page 1 in my port have disappeared. Anyone else?

Yes the same. And sorting by date is a little bit wrong too.

In my port not disappeared, just been mixed.
Also I notice on any ss search, images with spam titles are not ranked so good anymore

They have changed the design of the search a bit and adjusted the algorithm again.

Here's what I've noticed:

- Photos are place higher than vectors.
- They got rid of the tab system (Popular, relevant, most recent) and placed them under a drop down menu.
- They started penalizing spammers. You know, the guys who spam the same keywords over and over in the title to gain higher placement. I don't seem many of them anymore after this update.
- On hover, they show the title...a good reason to penalize all the spammers.

Some of my images got shuffled around...dropped a few places in some rankings, but we'll see how it affect sales in the upcoming weeks. Today is consistent with the past few days, so I don't know the real effect of it yet.

Ok, I think I figured how the new algorithm works, if this is indeed a more permanent algorithm change.

- Photos are NOT favored over vectors as I originally though.
- The new rank sorting seem to be determined by how long the image has been on SS and/or how many downloads it has over its lifetime. This new change will definitely benefit veterans and older images. The newer images with less downloads are pushed down the rankings.

Do a search for anything and click on the image. The image ID that are lower are ranked higher.

Hmmm. My most popular doesn't really make any sort of sense now, and each page of most recent seems to be "upside down"...the true most recent images appear at the bottom of the page, and less recent appear at the top. Weird. Whatever they did squashed my sales again. Today is awful.

Quote from: Minsc on August 11, 2016, 22:44
....
- The new rank sorting seem to be determined by how long the image has been on SS and/or how many downloads it has over its lifetime. This new change will definitely benefit veterans and older images. The newer images with less downloads are pushed down the rankings.
......

Not true. I see many of my files uploaded this or last month on page 1 or 2 of the most popular search results. No problem here.

Quote from: Shelma1 on August 11, 2016, 23:03
Hmmm. My most popular doesn't really make any sort of sense now, and each page of most recent seems to be "upside down"...the true most recent images appear at the bottom of the page, and less recent appear at the top. Weird. Whatever they did squashed my sales again. Today is awful.

I'm seeing the same. Popular is a muddle and each page of new runs from 100 down to 1, rather than the other way around. Searches by new give the same page anomaly, with older images above newer ones.

Sales today are awful, at about 25% of my last year average.

I can't decide if they're trying to improve things or are just frantically trying to fix things as they break?

The title spammers are still there - they've just moved to the bottom of the first page rather than the top but, as this appears to be happening for new images, I don't think they are intentionally being penalised. Just search 'sun icon' and scroll down - it's the same old same old......

Stock Vector Illustration:
Sun Icon / Sun Icon Vector / Sun Icon Picture / Sun Icon Drawing / Sun Icon Image / Sun Icon Graphic / Sun Icon Art / Sun Icon JPG / Sun Icon JPEG / Sun Icon EPS / Sun Icon AI

Image ID:318204746

After seeing this I finally understand what Shutterstock was talking about in the email. Guess I didn't have anything to worry about after all.

Quote from: Minsc on August 11, 2016, 22:17
They have changed the design of the search a bit and adjusted the algorithm again.

Here's what I've noticed:

- Photos are place higher than vectors.
- They got rid of the tab system (Popular, relevant, most recent) and placed them under a drop down menu.
- They started penalizing spammers. You know, the guys who spam the same keywords over and over in the title to gain higher placement. I don't seem many of them anymore after this update.
- On hover, they show the title...a good reason to penalize all the spammers.

Some of my images got shuffled around...dropped a few places in some rankings, but we'll see how it affect sales in the upcoming weeks. Today is consistent with the past few days, so I don't know the real effect of it yet.

On hover, also the zoom has disappeared, and this penalizes a lot vertical images (it is very bad!)

Quote from: Minsc on August 11, 2016, 22:44
Ok, I think I figured how the new algorithm works, if this is indeed a more permanent algorithm change.

- Photos are NOT favored over vectors as I originally though.
- The new rank sorting seem to be determined by how long the image has been on SS and/or how many downloads it has over its lifetime. This new change will definitely benefit veterans and older images. The newer images with less downloads are pushed down the rankings.

Do a search for anything and click on the image. The image ID that are lower are ranked higher.

I think new ranking system gives more weight to lifetime downloads of an image. Older images with more downloads are ranked higher than new images with less downloads. Apparently, uploaded date really doesn't matter, more the number of downloads, higher the rank. Yep, veterans will be benefited more.

Quote from: anathaya on August 12, 2016, 07:38
I think new ranking system gives more weight to lifetime downloads of an image. Older images with more downloads are ranked higher than new images with less downloads. Apparently, uploaded date really doesn't matter, more the number of downloads, higher the rank. Yep, veterans will be benefited more.

I understand where they're coming from, but it should also consider sales over a recent time period... let's say the last year. Comparing downloads in the most recent year is more important total lifetime downloads. An image may be popular 10 years ago, but if it's not popular in 2016, then it's not as relevant. If you're searching for a computer and some old tower computer is at the top of search, it doesn't benefit buyers or contributors.

Newcomers will never make it to the top when you rank by total downloads. Not just newcomers, but newly uploaded images as well. I know veterans would love that, but it doesn't make a lot of sense if you're trying to build a smart algorithm.

double post.

They probably calculate time online + no. of downloads +  maybe number of views. I know, that for example on fotolia, some of my files were on top of the search and had only few downloads, but were also very short time online.

For example: https://eu.fotolia.com/id/117288171  this file is on the first place (popular and releavance) for "deer" keyword (100.000+ results) and has only 3 downloads, but it's also online only for about a week or so.

With the change my bestsellers were pushed below while my ex-bestsellers revived.
Plus a EL yesterday and 2 giant SOD's today... can't complain, will start uploading more often again.
I'm already better in August than entire July 2016 which was a disastrous month.

SS admin just said they have identified the problem and they're trying to fix it. Looks like it wasn't a logical change after all. Someone probably screwed up the algorithm and deployed it without testing. For a company who claims to have an amazing algorithm, sorting by most downloads isn't really that amazing at all...even a newbie software engineer can do it.

Hopefully things will get back to 'normal' by Monday.

its all guesswork, no one knows exactly and trying to figure it out is a waste of time, ss has said its not straight forward, its a mix of downloads, file age, views, and a lot more. better spend time on creating new images

Quote from: Minsc on August 12, 2016, 17:32
SS admin just said they have identified the problem and they're trying to fix it. Looks like it wasn't a logical change after all. Someone probably screwed up the algorithm and deployed it without testing. For a company who claims to have an amazing algorithm, sorting by most downloads isn't really that amazing at all...even a newbie software engineer can do it.

Hopefully things will get back to 'normal' by Monday.

Yep but it takes a true pro to really mess things up! Perhaps they should recall their old IT head back from his family!

Quote from: Microstockphoto on August 12, 2016, 17:35
its all guesswork, no one knows exactly and trying to figure it out is a waste of time, ss has said its not straight forward, its a mix of downloads, file age, views, and a lot more. better spend time on creating new images

and no doubt it changes all the time anyway.

Quote from: Minsc on August 12, 2016, 08:30

Quote from: anathaya on August 12, 2016, 07:38
I think new ranking system gives more weight to lifetime downloads of an image. Older images with more downloads are ranked higher than new images with less downloads. Apparently, uploaded date really doesn't matter, more the number of downloads, higher the rank. Yep, veterans will be benefited more.

I understand where they're coming from, but it should also consider sales over a recent time period... let's say the last year. Comparing downloads in the most recent year is more important total lifetime downloads. An image may be popular 10 years ago, but if it's not popular in 2016, then it's not as relevant. If you're searching for a computer and some old tower computer is at the top of search, it doesn't benefit buyers or contributors.

Newcomers will never make it to the top when you rank by total downloads. Not just newcomers, but newly uploaded images as well. I know veterans would love that, but it doesn't make a lot of sense if you're trying to build a smart algorithm.

i am not sure i get what you mean. if so, did you check to see where sjlocke's images are placed???
he was not veteran in terms of ss...
he is relatively newcomer ...

so, according to you, sjlocke's images are not supposed to be placed high

Quote from: etudiante_rapide on August 12, 2016, 18:03

i am not sure i get what you mean. if so, did you check to see where sjlocke's images are placed???
he was not veteran in terms of ss...
he is relatively newcomer ...

so, according to you, sjlocke's images are not supposed to be placed high

I just did a search for "New Year":

https://www.shutterstock.com/search?searchterm=new+year&search_source=base_search_form&language=en&page=1&sort=popular&image_type=all&safe=true

Notice that the most popular goes back to only 2013, which makes me think that it's not ranked by total lifetime downloads, but they're ranking the images based on total downloads for the last 4 years. That means his images will still rank high because he started just before then. For anyone who started last year like me, it's an uphill climb.

And of course, this is an example search of the ineffective new algorithm. The most relevant results should be to show images from 2016 (getting ready for 2017) at the top, and not New Years images from 2013, 2014, or even 2015.

Quote from: Minsc on August 12, 2016, 18:47

Quote from: etudiante_rapide on August 12, 2016, 18:03

i am not sure i get what you mean. if so, did you check to see where sjlocke's images are placed???
he was not veteran in terms of ss...
he is relatively newcomer ...

so, according to you, sjlocke's images are not supposed to be placed high

I just did a search for "New Year":

https://www.shutterstock.com/search?searchterm=new+year&search_source=base_search_form&language=en&page=1&sort=popular&image_type=all&safe=true

Notice that the most popular goes back to only 2013, which makes me think that it's not ranked by total lifetime downloads, but they're ranking the images based on total downloads for the last 4 years. That means his images will still rank high because he started just before then. For anyone who started last year like me, it's an uphill climb.

And of course, this is an example search of the ineffective new algorithm. The most relevant results should be to show images from 2016 (getting ready for 2017) at the top, and not New Years images from 2013, 2014, or even 2015.

You have picked a rather exceptional  example its unlikely the algorithm will recognise the specific context of these images.

Quote from: Pauws99 on August 12, 2016, 19:28
You have picked a rather exceptional  example its unlikely the algorithm will recognise the specific context of these images.

Anything that is that has a time based element will be affected it. Anything that's related to technology is affected. Anything that has a design trend element like skeuomorphic design from 5 years ago vs flat design today is affected. Any editorial image that is based on a timed event is affected. Yeah, I gave an exceptional case with the 'New Years' search, but there are so much more. We're talking about tens of millions of images.

They have shuffled everything.. this has affected my entire sale.
 

All I know is salesb finally picked up for a few days. Now they seem back down again.