MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: Jo Ann Snover on November 22, 2011, 14:37
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Seeing a couple of comments in the iStock help forums and some odd results in a search I did, I think iStock has done something to break its search parsing for multi-word terms.
I typed tropical beach into the top box, photos only, and I get in the results (many of which are beaches) a beer bottle, bunch of grapes and a dog, all isolated, all with no obvious connection to what I searched for.
Grapes (http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-3700917-bunch-of-green-grapes-laying.php?st=dc2e093), dog (http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-156426-sad-dog.php?st=dc2e093), beer (http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-5356698-beer-bottle-with-condensation.php?st=dc2e093)
slobo had reported seeing a bit of grungy paper (http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-3614856-old-card.php?st=285f741) in a search for car repair, which may be the same thing. A help forum post (without examples) in the search thread mentioned this type of thing too.
Anyone else seeing this? Perhaps if we can give IS some more examples they can get it fixed faster.
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Yep, it happens to me too.
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I sent info to kelvinjay about my examples and I see the Help forum post has been updated with other examples, so I hope they have some clue as to what they broke from those.
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Last night (after midnight UK time), I was finding odd photos in searches, by authors who don't usually spam, but when I looked in the keywords, they 'wrong' keywords weren't there. That was even single words (e.g. my usual 'duck'). But being banned from forums and now sitemail, no way I could report it. Tough. It seems worse if you sort by downloads - try e.g. horse, cow, book.
The interesting thing is that there only seem to be one or two false hits in each search, making me wonder if it's deliberate (someone once told me there's a name for this, a known marketing ploy of 'teasing' with other goods)
Keyword phrases have been 'half broken' for weeks. For example if you put a keyword phrase in top box (before this recent glitch) it worked, but if you put the same keyword phrase, even in quotes, the words separate. Even if you click on a keyword phrase in a file, to see others with that phrase, it separates out into separate words, encouraging spamming.
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http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=317812&page=8 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=317812&page=8) I think it's being discussed here.