Quote from: RacePhoto on January 05, 2012, 07:32
[Lobo] Sept. 25th on the IS forums:

best match seems to be in a place that the Warlocks are happy with right now. Does that mean everyone is going to be happy? No. Not everyone is going to be happy. Do we sort best match to please contributors who are searching every 20 minutes or so? No, we sort best match based on what we think the buying public is interested in. I should also note that there seems to be some inconsistencies with what one contributor is seeing verses with what another. I suspect this has something to do with the localized search.

Due to the fact that we aren't privy to the inner workings of the best match we are always going to wonder what the exact logic is behind the current search results. The fact is, no two people are actually seeing the identical search results so it becomes even more cumbersome. So, in a nut shell, things are how they are going to be for the foreseeable future. As soon as we have an indication that things are going to change we can expect things to stay the same.

This ends my update on best match and best match related concerns. If you have any direct questions or comments related to the current sort I'm going to direct you to Contributor Relations and then indicate my Hammer will be smashing all future threads that start with "best match Sort changed..." or the like.

Repeating this part:  Do we sort best match to please contributors who are searching every 20 minutes or so? No  

It changes. It changes based on what you may have looked at before. It changes by location. It could change based on a random change so at 1:01 people see older exclusive files, at 1:02 they would see, newer non-exclusive files, at 1:03 people see best sellers from their own time zone.

The threads over the past months have shown that superstition plays a large roll in what people are finding and in fact, some people have their mind made up, so it doesn't matter what they see. They are going to conclude that the evidence supports whatever they want it to support.

That's my point. There is hardly a bit of evidence for anything scientific to prove that Old, Exclusive files are being advanced to the front and new non-exclusive files are getting pushed to the back, on a consistent basis. Time after time, different people run an identical search and get different results, even the same people doing the same identical search and get different results.

But I am for this thread continuing and some day hitting 50 pages, instead of a new one every week, re-hashing the always changing claims and theories.
[/quote]



Has anyone ever wondered why the cookies that the various micro sites load onto our systems keep getting fatter and fatter and each year more third party sites are involved in the process?  The sites use those cookies to gain info and track our activities on other sites, etc. They increasingly use that info to serve content and to manipulate resources (our images) to increase their own bottom line.  

I posted an old job listing for a SS search engine programmer earlier in this thread.  Now they are not going to publicly post sensitive info in the job listing, but they do give us a few clues as to what the future holds as far as searches.

I know that various sites including SS change out third party cookies at different times of the year. Right now there are only a few cookies associated with third party data gathering services on many of the sites, but a few months ago the sites were using quite a few third party sites to track our activities as buyers.

http://www.shutterstock.com/jobs.mhtml?nl=1&jvi=o46KVfwz,Job&jvs=Indeed&jvk=Job
"Among other great benefits, Shutterstock offers competitive salaries, health and dental plans, 401k, company equity, daily breakfasts, weekly massages, discounted gym memberships"

http://www.shutterstock.com/jobs.mhtml?nl=1&jvi=oIjWVfwC,Job&jvs=Indeed&jvk=Job
"Search Engineer

We have a lot of challenging problems ahead of us, including:

   Helping customers find the images they're looking for as fast as possible.
    Providing recommendations based on a customer's searches, social graph, and other factors.
   Developing a framework to support rapid development of dynamic ranking algorithms.
   Creating a massively parallelized and real-time indexing process.
   Tracking search analytics and automatically acting on the results.

Our search engine is built on Perl and Solr.  Ideally you will have previous experience working with Solr and programming in Java. Being a JVM or Perl guru is an added bonus.  All candidates should have experience working on search engines and solving problems with large datasets."

 Not bothering to analyze the best match, they always seem to mess with it year end/early Jan...but I sure wish buyers would get back to buying. My asked are slllloooooooow. Crumby sales start to the year.

Quote from: SNP on January 05, 2012, 19:15
Not bothering to analyze the best match, they always seem to mess with it year end/early Jan...but I sure wish buyers would get back to buying. My asked are slllloooooooow. Crumby sales start to the year.

Maybe this is the new 'normal' for sales? I've continually had to re-adjust my expectations from IS over the last couple of years. What I consider a 'good day' now would have been a disaster back in the day.

I notice that Istock didn't present the buyers with the usual festive huge price increase this year. I wonder why?

Quote from: gostwyck on January 05, 2012, 20:16

Quote from: SNP on January 05, 2012, 19:15
Not bothering to analyze the best match, they always seem to mess with it year end/early Jan...but I sure wish buyers would get back to buying. My asked are slllloooooooow. Crumby sales start to the year.

Maybe this is the new 'normal' for sales? I've continually had to re-adjust my expectations from IS over the last couple of years. What I consider a 'good day' now would have been a disaster back in the day.

I notice that Istock didn't present the buyers with the usual festive huge price increase this year. I wonder why?

God, I hope this isn't the new normal!  Over the last year, when sales dropped to 50% of what they used to be, it was really upsetting.  Now they are at 20% of what they used to be!!     

Even the mid level sites are outselling Istock.  Really, really pitiful!

Quote from: gostwyck on January 05, 2012, 20:16

Quote from: SNP on January 05, 2012, 19:15
Not bothering to analyze the best match, they always seem to mess with it year end/early Jan...but I sure wish buyers would get back to buying. My asked are slllloooooooow. Crumby sales start to the year.

Maybe this is the new 'normal' for sales? I've continually had to re-adjust my expectations from IS over the last couple of years. What I consider a 'good day' now would have been a disaster back in the day.

I notice that Istock didn't present the buyers with the usual festive huge price increase this year. I wonder why?

any new normal is usually short lived in terms of the best match. it is very early after the holidays to jump to conclusions....

Quote from: gostwyck on January 05, 2012, 20:16

Quote from: SNP on January 05, 2012, 19:15
Not bothering to analyze the best match, they always seem to mess with it year end/early Jan...but I sure wish buyers would get back to buying. My asked are slllloooooooow. Crumby sales start to the year.

Maybe this is the new 'normal' for sales? I've continually had to re-adjust my expectations from IS over the last couple of years. What I consider a 'good day' now would have been a disaster back in the day.

I notice that Istock didn't present the buyers with the usual festive huge price increase this year. I wonder why?

Because they cut their costs from the supply side, they don't have to charge more, they are making more on less sales, at our expense.

Say the magic word and win yourself a stuffed duck... Sustainable.   

Sales are down, commissions are down, IS is driving business to ThinkStock subs and away from IS packages. (forced  opt. in for non-exclusives because not enough people were volunteering to sink their own sales.) IS images pushed to the front of ThinkStock searches.

Fine mess, isn't it?

If IS drops back to the level of the next five or so, then there will be only one. (I loved Highlander...)

Quote from: lisafx on January 05, 2012, 20:39
God, I hope this isn't the new normal!  Over the last year, when sales dropped to 50% of what they used to be, it was really upsetting.  Now they are at 20% of what they used to be!!     

Even the mid level sites are outselling Istock.  Really, really pitiful!

Not just me then! Yep, pitiful is the word.

Not just you. Two Five (still pitiful, but thought I should update it just to be fair) sales today at IS - a bad weekend! Yesterday had a bit more spunk so I thought the week would pick up as it went on. But DT has been pretty quiet this week, so perhaps it's just a slow start

For me, even IS is surprisingly good, I really didn't expect my sales to return to Fall levels so fast. Only FT has been a bit on the quiet side, but I got a bit more sales today. 123RF was also good today, which I can't say for the last 2 months

Well, they may be questioning what makes "quality".  I just received a survey from IS as a "buyer" of imagery asking me to rate about 30 images ( a mix of independent, exclusive and agency work).  However, the standard was supposedly based on my definition of value.

QuoteThanks, now that you have told us what is valuable to you, we would like you to evaluate some of the photography that we offer on our site.  Your Task

1) Imagine that YOU work for iStockphoto, and your role is to evaluate photography.

2) For each of the photographs which follow, please rate each on a scale from 1 to 5 stars.

One star ★  representing the lowest quality in terms of the value it offers.

Five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ representing the highest quality in terms of the value it offers.

The previous page asked me how I defined what is valuable to me in an image.  Lots of copy space, high production cost, realistic emotions, timeless imagery, current imagery, etc...  Each on a 1-5 scale.

So maybe someone is trying to listen to what the buyers want.

BTW, this was one of the images:

^^^^^ Maybe it is a fiendish new crowdsourcing review model?

speaking of model - that guy looks familiar.

Quote from: pancaketom on January 08, 2012, 05:08
^^^^^ Maybe it is a fiendish new crowdsourcing review model?

speaking of model - that guy looks familiar.

What does he do with those loose pencils in his shirt pocket while he's running the heavy equipment? (looks like a Cat loader or dozer)

Quote from: RacePhoto on January 08, 2012, 06:01

Quote from: pancaketom on January 08, 2012, 05:08
^^^^^ Maybe it is a fiendish new crowdsourcing review model?

speaking of model - that guy looks familiar.

What does he do with those loose pencils in his shirt pocket while he's running the heavy equipment? (looks like a Cat loader or dozer)

He was probably signing another model release for Lisa or taking out the bins

Nah! I hear Lisa's had it with her remodel (didn't she say something about remodel from hell?) - he's driving the dozer at the house and she'll have a great new series of images. Not many people will have those

Quote from: sjlocke on January 08, 2012, 04:58
Well, they may be questioning what makes "quality".  I just received a survey from IS as a "buyer" of imagery asking me to rate about 30 images ( a mix of independent, exclusive and agency work).  However, the standard was supposedly based on my definition of value.
...

The previous page asked me how I defined what is valuable to me in an image.  Lots of copy space, high production cost, realistic emotions, timeless imagery, current imagery, etc...  Each on a 1-5 scale.

So maybe someone is trying to listen to what the buyers want.

Interesting. Probably too little, too late though. Istock's huge mistake was stuffing the front of the search with expensive V/A images and then refusing to provide a price filter for months afterwards.

Of course they are compounding the same mistake now by providing a best match distorted in favour of exclusive images. When will they learn to present what the customer wants to buy rather than what Istock prefers them to buy?

Until Istock wakes up to the idea that they are supposed to be providing a service to the customers and the contributors, rather than dancing to the short-term tune of their profit-masters, they are screwed.

Hi Sean,

do you think they may be planning to "rate our files on upload" by some kind of system?

Surely this must be a precursor to dividing up the library by taking images considered 'low quality' out of the main collection and selling them only via the PP (or the dollar bin, if they still have it).

Didn't they use some phrase a little while ago about up-routing and down-routing images according to their own quality criteria? (I can't remember the exact term they used).

I don't think it's even possible to rate 10+ mil images, they'd have to bother each buyer with hundreds if not thousands of images, not to mention many contributors are also buyers so the results would be biased. Perhaps that's their new strategy, make the contributors also the buyers (you have to buy/convert what, at least 50 credits?), forcing the to do so, "for their greater good"

Quote from: wut on January 08, 2012, 11:11
I don't think it's even possible to rate 10+ mil images, they'd have to bother each buyer with hundreds if not thousands of images, not to mention many contributors are also buyers so the results would be biased.

To some degree they've already been 'rated' by how frequently they were downloaded. If Istock would simply allow that natural process of selection to take place, rather than skewing it in what they mistakedly believe is their own financial interest, then the customers would be far more satisfied with the search results.

The files are already rated internally by inspectors.

Quote from: aeonf on January 08, 2012, 11:29
The files are already rated internally by inspectors.

^^^ Ouch __ sounds painful!

Quote from: aeonf on January 08, 2012, 11:29
The files are already rated internally by inspectors.

Never heard that one before, and it wouldn't explain some very bizarre results if so.
It's possible, of course, and I do suspect some sort of 'person' boost.

Quote from: aeonf on January 08, 2012, 11:29
The files are already rated internally by inspectors.

can you please state a source or is it hearsay?

Can't state the source but it came from a friend of a few inspectors.
They have a rating of 1 to 5 and this rating is another paramater which gets taken into account (out of many others) in the best match.
Believe it or not is your choice but it does seem logical to me.

Quote from: aeonf on January 08, 2012, 11:53
Can't state the source but it came from a friend of a few inspectors.
They have a rating of 1 to 5 and this rating is another paramater which gets taken into account (out of many others) in the best match.
Believe it or not is your choice but it does seem logical to me.

I guess independets get an automatic 1 then (or even zero)