Quote from: RacePhoto on September 22, 2011, 02:00

Quote from: ShadySue on September 21, 2011, 08:16

Quote from: sharpshot on September 21, 2011, 02:08

Buyers can filter out editorial, so I suppose that's not a huge problem for them?  The spam keywords are going to annoy editorial buyers, that's good, hopefully they will find what they want here http://www.alamy.com/

Alamy's search is a load of fetid dingoes' kidneys, I'm afraid.
I'd love Alamy to be successful, but the search certainly isn't going to attract buyers with little time or patience for searching.
For example, three recent poor 'hits' on my files on Alamy:
'man carrying woman' - my file is a woman carrying a man
'sign language' - a sign in the Gaelic language
'crazy children' - children playing crazy golf

You just won't give up on this will you?

No, but i know it's not going to lead to any improvement.  :'(

Quote

All the words are in the keywords, what do you want the search to do, find images through psychic channeling. Or maybe like IS find words you didn't ask for because they are somehow code related?
It's doing exactly what it's supposed to do, finding the same words as entered in the search.
Yes words can have a few meanings and there can be ambiguity but it's finding precisely what was asked for.

Actually, the words thrown up in a search result don't "all" have to be in the keywords. They can be taken from the caption or the author's name as we have hashed out before. That's one of the problems.
And if they allowed phrases, like 'crazy golf', a photo of a family (keywords adults, children) playing crazy golf wouldn't show up in a request for 'crazy children'.
Yes, IS's best match is all over the place. RIP BM2 which could have been the 'killer app'.
But Alamy's search must drive buyers nuts.

Nice that we could hijack the thread. Hey how about "Red Square"? And which one were you looking for? Or anything with a red square in it?

The fact that you can fool a search, proves nothing. You need to find something else to keep your hands and mind busy, besides figuring out bad or confusing searches. It only finds what's there!

The fact that the search looks for ALL the words that the artist added to their image, is a benefit. If you are selling, would you like the search to ignore your caption, location, or keywords?

I'll ask again, if you don't want it to find the words you ask for and the words that are connected to the image, what do you want it to find?

Poor searches produce poor results. Bad keywording will give buyers bad results. The search engine doesn't do that, the stupid humans are responsible! The search can only do what we ask it to do, just like a computer. It doesn't have intelligence and isn't intuitive.

And OT, I don't think there is a best match shift on IS. I think the best match is totally screwed and randomly changing all the time with different portions assigned priority. It looks at location of the user, it can look at previous searches, it can look at type of license, age or price or phase of the Moon, and an hour later, change again. Maybe this is the frustration, because some people want to game the search and put their images up top for better placement, and it's been defeated. Some people will be frustrated because they can't manipulate the search to their advantage.

That's my opinion of "Best Match Shift". It's random, always changing and there's no way to analyze it or control it. Might as well live with it and go watch something else that we have no control over?

Quote from: aeonf on September 22, 2011, 02:06

I don't know what they've done, but I like it!

They made the best match search like the file age search again.  It's not good for anyone because it puts irrelevant and bad images in front of the buyers.  I think my sales have increased a little since I have a relatively large amount of newer stuff (11 of my last 20 sales were first timers when normally its 1 or 2 out of 20) but the searches look terrible.  It's very unprofessional and we can't even question this in the forums there.

I'm not seeing this. Seasonal searches like 'thanksgiving' definitely seem to favour new files. but my usual searches including terms like 'business', 'family' and the rest of my test terms produce a good mix of results today.

yeah, "brick wall" produces weird results..."money" produces good results....though I notice the minority of V/A files in many of my searches by best match. interesting.

yeah, "brick wall" produces weird results..."money" produces good results....though I notice the minority of V/A files in many of my searches by best match. interesting.

So goodbye yellow brick road.  Elton John! 

The number one best match for "South Carolina" the State is an image of someone named Carolina Bacardi who is in Los Angeles.  Surprise surprise it's an Edstock image and it is how the Best Match is supposed to be, not a good sign.

This isn't spam, but "Ed" has 7 out of the top 10 best match hits for "Grand Central Station".
What was that Joyze said?
"On a technical note, we will be dating these files so that our system recognizes their original creation date, and not the date they are uploaded to iStock. This is being done to ensure that these new files do not dominate our Best Match sort en masse."
Just as well: it could have been worse, since "Ed" has at least another 7 files in the top 50.

Quote from: ShadySue on September 23, 2011, 17:09

Word from Lobo within the past hour:
"best match seems to be in a place that the Warlocks are happy with right now."
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=333964&page=6#post6489059

I hope they do leave it alone. Somehow this version pushed quite a few of my files closer to the top of the search. Some of my best sellers have dropped slightly but not bad.

Ultimately it may not matter because their dynamic search displays different results in different regions and may also weigh other stuff like buying patterns.

I hope whatever they have now is the same as for the past week - no complaints on sales from that version for me.

wow, I just made a search for bald eagle. On the first page best match result with 100 images, there were
66 with 0 DLs
10 with 1DL

and only
8 with >10 DLs

Seriously - are they trying to chase away ALL buyers??? This can�t be called a best match. Obviously the buyers aren�t too happy with the result they get, otherwise they�d buy the images.