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Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: phildate on March 11, 2008, 21:14

Title: Categories
Post by: phildate on March 11, 2008, 21:14

Does anyone really bother with these? Do you always try to select three and have you gone back to your older images and re-categorised?

Do designers use them to search for images?

Just throwing this out there!

Title: Re: Categories
Post by: mjp on March 12, 2008, 02:12

Do you select all three? I only select 1-2 because its hard to pick all three for some images (like food, simple objects etc).

Title: Re: Categories
Post by: Phil on March 12, 2008, 04:30

last year I went through and made sure I had what I felt was the best category for the 300 odd images that I had on at the time (and up to 3 categories for when I get appropriate categories) If there was any effect on my sales I did not notice it.

Personally I dont think I've heard of anyone using categories on any site (I'm sure now that I have said that a dozen people will come along and say they have :) ) and so always been very dubious as to there value.  could you imagine browsing istock or shutterstock by category?  hmmm... I need a background from shutterstock, browse 'backgrounds'??  :):)

Title: Re: Categories
Post by: fotografer on March 12, 2008, 05:52

I think that the catagories are a waste of time and I doubt very much that many people use them in their searches.  They are too general to be of any use and you can get much better results using keywords

Title: Re: Categories
Post by: leaf on March 12, 2008, 06:21

Quote from: clearviewstock on March 12, 2008, 04:30

could you imagine browsing istock or shutterstock by category?  hmmm... I need a background from shutterstock, browse 'backgrounds'??  :):)

Thats true but I wouldn't be surprised if people who want a zebra background for example would search for 'zebra' WITHIN the background catagory.

Like when shopping at B&H, I use keywords in combination with catagories.  I first search for lens, then go to the canon brand catagory.

Title: Re: Categories
Post by: zorki on March 12, 2008, 10:03

IS has continued to dumb down the categories over the years. My felling is that IS must not feel that people are using them as much as just keyword searching. I put minimal effort into selecting them. Never more than one category

Title: Re: Categories
Post by: Pixart on March 12, 2008, 10:18

I hightly doubt many use IS categories, or any of the other sites for that matter.  EXCEPT Shutterstock, I bet a lot of subscribers go to People - Newest every morning. 

Title: Re: Categories
Post by: Phil on March 12, 2008, 18:37

Quote from: Pixart on March 12, 2008, 10:18

I hightly doubt many use IS categories, or any of the other sites for that matter.  EXCEPT Shutterstock, I bet a lot of subscribers go to People - Newest every morning. 

aah I didn't think of it being used with newest.