Author Topic: Relevant Keyword Priority Order Not Working (Read 8532 times)

X9D7CE84A2B5Y · « **on:** February 23, 2015, 01:28 »

First is a screen shot of the relevant keyword order of a picture I uploaded recently showing from my DeepMeta.

Next is a screen shot of the keyword order of the image itself from the iStock closeup page.

As you may notice, the keywords are all misplaced and don't follow the priority order based upon relevance that I have given them. As the most blatant example, the keyword "Thailand" should be first and yet it is the next to the last keyword.

This is only the first image I checked. I can imagine there could be thousands of others which might be coming up in the same way. I only noticed this when I did a keyword search based upon the top keywords for this image and the image didn't even come up at all.

Talk about images going into the abyss, if they wont even come up with the keywords they are supposed to come up on, how can we ever prevent them from completely falling into the abyss forever?

As it is now, a buyer will probably never find this image unless they search by the quirky keyword order priority the iStock system has assigned to this image. Nor does the image come up within the search results under the keywords that it should. I have tried many times to changes the keyword order slightly in DeepMeta for this image and submit the keyword order changes, but nothing changes on the iStock closeup page.

Beppe Grillo · « **Reply #1 on:** February 23, 2015, 02:41 »

Same here, the order is completely different…
So I wonder why I have spent all this time to order and prioritize my keywords!!?
[just another work for… nothing]

Stockmaan · « **Reply #2 on:** February 23, 2015, 02:54 »

Interestingly, I was not paying attention on this! Jesus, this is unbelievably bad.

dpimborough · « **Reply #3 on:** February 23, 2015, 03:16 »

What makes you think keyword order is used by iStock?

ShadySue · « **Reply #4 on:** February 23, 2015, 03:30 »

Quote from: Teddy the Cat on February 23, 2015, 03:16

What makes you think keyword order is used by iStock?

It's going to be used by them for their new 'similars' system.

ShadySue · « **Reply #5 on:** February 23, 2015, 03:43 »

This is the cookie cutter response given to questions like this:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365351

However, I too have seen (but not always, inconsistency being a rule there, apparently) bizarre changes within a day or two and with no recorded views, which are 'claimed' only to be recorded by registered buyers. Viz I keyword from specific to very general and sometimes withint a couple of days, the 'top' keywords are the very general ones. With no recorded views.

It would be of more use, in theory, to post your screenshots over there. But you may just get the same reply.

It matters, because your keyword order is theoretically reflected in the Best Match positioning of files, as well as determining what thums will show under an image when the new system is rolled out.

B8 · « **Reply #6 on:** February 23, 2015, 04:10 »

Quote from: Teddy the Cat on February 23, 2015, 03:16

What makes you think keyword order is used by iStock?

You are obviously uninformed. iStock told us long ago to place keywords in relevant order of priority for best results when searching. And if you are using Deep Meta it tells you on the page where you put in your keywords to upload an image "PLEASE NOTE: Enter the most relevant keywords to the top of your keyword list". I think the importance of this issue is undisputed.

X9D7CE84A2B5Y · « **Reply #7 on:** February 23, 2015, 04:19 »

Quote from: ShadySue on February 23, 2015, 03:43

This is the cookie cutter response given to questions like this:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365351

However, I too have seen (but not always, inconsistency being a rule there, apparently) bizarre changes within a day or two and with no recorded views, which are 'claimed' only to be recorded by registered buyers. Viz I keyword from specific to very general and sometimes withint a couple of days, the 'top' keywords are the very general ones. With no recorded views.

It would be of more use, in theory, to post your screenshots over there. But you may just get the same reply.

It matters, because your keyword order is theoretically reflected in the Best Match positioning of files, as well as determining what thums will show under an image when the new system is rolled out.

Thanks, that article makes sense and would explain as to why a few other keywords might show up first. But it doesn't explain why the first and most important keyword I listed in terms of relevance shows up last. This image is one I uploaded very recently, has only had a few views so far, so the weighting order based on buyer searches should not be playing a big role with this image yet. And in fact the problem was already occurring even before the image had any views. So I don't think in this case that the buyer keyword search history on this file even plays a role at all unfortunately. Still seems to me more like a system flaw and for all we know this flaw could be rampant throughout the system. Disheartening.

JKB · « **Reply #8 on:** February 23, 2015, 04:30 »

Quote from: B8 on February 23, 2015, 04:10

Quote from: Teddy the Cat on February 23, 2015, 03:16
What makes you think keyword order is used by iStock?

You are obviously uninformed. iStock told us long ago to place keywords in relevant order of priority for best results when searching. And if you are using Deep Meta it tells you on the page where you put in your keywords to upload an image "PLEASE NOTE: Enter the most relevant keywords to the top of your keyword list". I think the importance of this issue is undisputed.

AFAIK that was just a brief moment in time, after which the keyword order went back to being of no importance on newly uploaded files. The DM note is just an artefact from that time. I still keyword in a certain specific order, with the most relevant keywords first, but just as ShadySue I've noticed an unexplained re-order of the keywords for some files, while others seem to retain the order I specified.

Semmick Photo · « **Reply #9 on:** February 23, 2015, 04:45 »

Quote from: kelvinjay

When you upload the file, the keywords will initially appear in the order that you chose and all keywords will effectively have zero weight and all are equally relevant or irrelevant. As time passes though, buyers may find your file in a search and take a look at the ADP, this would count as a view and that view would add weighting to whichever keywords they had been searching for.

Why do you have to put them in order of importance when they all end up with zero weight anyway?

Seems like a whole lot of wasted time. Just add the keywords and the system will add weight through search analyses.

If it works like they say it will, it seems like a good system. But maybe I am missing something.

X9D7CE84A2B5Y · « **Reply #10 on:** February 23, 2015, 05:03 »

Quote from: Semmick Photo on February 23, 2015, 04:45

Quote from: kelvinjay
When you upload the file, the keywords will initially appear in the order that you chose and all keywords will effectively have zero weight and all are equally relevant or irrelevant. As time passes though, buyers may find your file in a search and take a look at the ADP, this would count as a view and that view would add weighting to whichever keywords they had been searching for.

Why do you have to put them in order of importance when they all end up with zero weight anyway?

Seems like a whole lot of wasted time. Just add the keywords and the system will add weight through search analyses.

If it works like they say it will, it seems like a good system. But maybe I am missing something.

Unfortunately whatever system they are employing is not working well, and is not a good system because when I search for the subject image using the most relevant keywords for that image, the image does not come up.

dpimborough · « **Reply #11 on:** February 23, 2015, 08:39 »

From the link Shady Sue posted it seems all the keyword priorities are decided by buyer searches and doesn't matter how we arrange the keywords.

"You can only arrange the keywords as you like when you first upload the files. Once they start getting keyword weightings attached to them by buyer actions, there's no way to counteract that, they simply reflect the words used to find them. "

However we can screw round with keywords as much as we like iStock will still manage to never sell the image any hoo

StanRohrer · « **Reply #12 on:** February 23, 2015, 08:58 »

Keyword order in DeepMeta is only good for the first upload. After that DeepMeta does not have access to the keyword order data. Here is a conversation I had from Dec 4-6, 2014 in the DeepMeta thread.
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=57564&messageid=7067889

StanRohrer asks:
Franky, With the recent discussions around iStock of fixing titles to have Google searchable words, I was looking to take prominently used keywords and adding them to the image title. After many sales of an image, iStock has sorted the keywords with the most used becoming the first entry. Does DM ever bring this sort order back?

Based on my recent test I think DM does NOT realign it's keyword sort order to match iStock. It would be nice if it did so I could work on title changes without having to open iStock online for each file.

It would be nice to have a window in DM where I could copy the sorted keywords and be able to paste them directly to the title. Or, even faster, click a button to copy the sorted keywords to the remaining available space in the title as would fit.

FrankyDeMeyer replies:
DeepMeta gets the geywords from the iStock API servers in the order you see on the image edit page, not the weighed order of terms you see on the image buy page.

Without requesting additional functionality for the iStock API, I'm afraid there's nothing to be done from the DeepMeta side.
Best is to use the "Ctrl-B" shortcut to open the view/buy page for an image.

hatman12 · « **Reply #13 on:** February 23, 2015, 16:15 »

The current best match search only considers the first six or seven keywords as being 'relevant'. Any words outside of the first half dozen are considered 'not sufficiently relevant'. So if your most important keyword falls outside of the first few keywords your image will be sent to the back of the search result.

Unfortunately this system also applies to multiple keyword searches. For a two keyword enquiry, BOTH words have to appear in the first half dozen for the search to be considered 'relevant' to that image. If not, it's sent to the back.

When the system exhausts the number of 'relevant' files, it defaults to a 'show new uploads' order. This is why, with multiple keyword searches, so many enquiries produce pages of files with zero downloads - the system cannot find enough 'relevant' files, so it shows new uploads first.

Clearly the problem is exacerbated for a search with three or more keywords.

This basically means that all the sales that used to be made from multiple keyword searches no longer exist - the system is so rigid that most files don't appear and 'new uploads' are shown instead.

It does mean that the search results are clean and refreshingly free from spam, but unfortunately it also results in lower sales for most people.

This system was introduced in September 2012 and explains why there was a sudden drop in sales at that time which have never recovered.

Those interested can see my correspondence about all this in the 'keywords and search' section of the iStock forum.

With this current system it makes sense to have as few keywords as possible - any secondary or unnecessary words will almost certainly result in lower sales. It is critically important to have the most relevant words in the top half dozen or so.

ShadySue · « **Reply #14 on:** February 23, 2015, 16:40 »

Quote from: hatman12 on February 23, 2015, 16:15

Unfortunately this system also applies to multiple keyword searches. For a two keyword enquiry, BOTH words have to appear in the first half dozen for the search to be considered 'relevant' to that image. If not, it's sent to the back.

When the system exhausts the number of 'relevant' files, it defaults to a 'show new uploads' order. This is why, with multiple keyword searches, so many enquiries produce pages of files with zero downloads - the system cannot find enough 'relevant' files, so it shows new uploads first.

Clearly the problem is exacerbated for a search with three or more keywords.

This basically means that all the sales that used to be made from multiple keyword searches no longer exist - the system is so rigid that most files don't appear and 'new uploads' are shown instead.

I'm pretty certain Lobo claimed on the forum that 'only a small percentage of buyers search on multiple keywords'.
I've been thinking of this over the weekend: the number of times that some facility has been removed from the site because 'only a small percentage of buyers do X or Y'. So they've been dropping 5% here, 2% there, 10% there ... which is a lot of buyers to have been alienated over the years.

Quote

This system was introduced in September 2012 and explains why there was a sudden drop in sales at that time which have never recovered.

Certainly there were many changes in Sept 2012 which was the beginning of the downturn of sales for many of us. One was that for a long time after that, new files sank really fast from the best match, and the 'curse of the download', which arguably had been running for several months maybe over a year, before that went on for a long time after Sept 12.

Quote

Those interested can see my correspondence about all this in the 'keywords and search' section of the iStock forum.
With this current system it makes sense to have as few keywords as possible - any secondary or unnecessary words will almost certainly result in lower sales. It is critically important to have the most relevant words in the top half dozen or so.

It's interesting, because on the recentish files which have had keywords 'switched round', I'm finding the more vague words like 'UK' are rising, but in general files aren't bought on these keywords.
But now that they're removing descriptions, the more general location might be important to a small percentage of buyers. For example, there was a buyer who needed files taken in Canada by Canadian photographers. Oops, silly me: these are the buyers they don't care about.

hatman12 · « **Reply #15 on:** February 23, 2015, 17:11 »

Lobo is probably correct overall, but the impact of these things will be bigger or smaller depending on the individual portfolio.

I can see, for instance, how buyers can be satisfied by doing a simple search for 'London' or 'Italy' or 'Thailand'. Or even 'Summer' or 'Spring'.

But buyers looking for specific things probably tend to refine their search. How many buyers would do a search for 'Background' or 'Border'? I can visualise 'summer+background' or 'christmas+border' but not just 'background'.

So a portfolio heavy in backgrounds and borders may have seen sales fall.

How many buyers search for 'man' or 'woman'? More likely they add one or two additional words. How do you get a picture of a woman smiling holding a phone without using multiple keywords?

To be fair, sales might not have fallen overall for these searches - it's just that many of the files that USED to make sales don't appear in those searches any more, whereas lots of newer uploads do.

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Author Topic: Relevant Keyword Priority Order Not Working (Read 8532 times)

X9D7CE84A2B5Y

Beppe Grillo

Stockmaan

dpimborough

ShadySue

ShadySue

B8

X9D7CE84A2B5Y

JKB

Semmick Photo

X9D7CE84A2B5Y

dpimborough

StanRohrer

hatman12

ShadySue

hatman12

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