so what are we up to? what keywords will we search? english main language?

Quote from: holgs on August 12, 2011, 07:37

Maybe we should aim for Monday, say: 12 midnight Sydney time, 9pm Bangkok, 4pm Berlin, 3pm London, 10am New York, 8am Calgary.... (+/- 1 hour?) seems to be a time when its not unreasonable anywhere. I think emptying cache and doing a search both logged in and out coule be good.

I think we should follow the above suggestions :  clear the cache, do the search on the suggested hour, do not forget to sort for "Best Match" (not downloads), go for all images (not just photos) ...

Let's go for location sensitive searches like suggested : 
- pregnant (human)  (Asian searchers should get Asian pregnant people if it really is a location aware search)
- harbor (-) or cityscape (-)
- football (player)

I did the test a few minutes ago, and as far as Belgium is concerned, there's no such thing as location aware search.  Have a look at the results for cityscape/football/harbor/pregnant :


What shows op are New York, South Africa ...
does not look very location aware ...

Is this a good way to report tomorrow, or should we come up with more than the first 5 images?

The problem with the search for football is that the search thinks that means "American Football' (which is in itself a problem) and if you search for "soccer" you get what much of the world thinks of as football - in German "fussballer" gets you soccer players. If you want to find Australian Rules football images, you won't find many images irrespective of what you look for. 

My suggestions for searches would be:

Cityscape
pregnant (human)
Classroom (school)

If the content is there and the search is actually producing localised results, each of these should produce different results. The Classroom example was the one Alamy used when they were demonstrating their localised results, though I suspect iStock has less options in many markets.

Quote from: Anyka on August 14, 2011, 15:00

Quote from: holgs on August 12, 2011, 07:37

Maybe we should aim for Monday, say: 12 midnight Sydney time, 9pm Bangkok, 4pm Berlin, 3pm London, 10am New York, 8am Calgary.... (+/- 1 hour?) seems to be a time when its not unreasonable anywhere. I think emptying cache and doing a search both logged in and out coule be good.

I think we should follow the above suggestions :  clear the cache, do the search on the suggested hour, do not forget to sort for "Best Match" (not downloads), go for all images (not just photos) ...

Let's go for location sensitive searches like suggested : 
- pregnant (human)  (Asian searchers should get Asian pregnant people if it really is a location aware search)
- harbor (-) or cityscape (-)
- football (player)

I did the test a few minutes ago, and as far as Belgium is concerned, there's no such thing as location aware search.  Have a look at the results for cityscape/football/harbor/pregnant :


What shows op are New York, South Africa ...
does not look very location aware ...

Is this a good way to report tomorrow, or should we come up with more than the first 5 images?

The problem with the search for football is that the search thinks that means "American Football' (which is in itself a problem) and if you search for "soccer" you get what much of the world thinks of as football - in German "fussballer" gets you soccer players. If you want to find Australian Rules football images, you won't find many images irrespective of what you look for. 

My suggestions for searches would be:

Cityscape
pregnant (human)
Classroom (school)

If the content is there and the search is actually producing localised results, each of these should produce different results. The Classroom example was the one Alamy used when they were demonstrating their localised results, though I suspect iStock has less options in many markets.

Two things, we don't even want to go there about "football" again and Futbol is another one. Good point unless someone wanted to see if Europe shows the right football and the US shows their version?

I'm not even sure that location matters, it's just a theory. I know I've been saying the same thing for over a year, but it could be random and vary based on a cycle of multiple conditions being favored. In other words, there is no "system" except random changes in the weighting so people get different results every time they search, which makes the collection alive instead of stagnant.

Maybe?

and i would suggest : 
- people
- or business
- or portrait

Also good decisions... maybe someone needs to make an executive decision.. Leaf???

Seems like there are just a few minutes left, right? What about the OP (holgs) making the decision on the keywords for us and how things should be done to get a good comparison?

well, FWIW, here are my returns for food, people and business:

http://staceylnewman.smugmug.com/Other/location-search/18544531_68bhTq/

Portugal

business
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8294845/luissantos_business.jpg

cityscape
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8294845/luissantos_cityscape.jpg

classroom (school)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8294845/luissantos_classroom.jpg

food
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8294845/luissantos_food.jpg

football (player)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8294845/luissantos_footballplayer.jpg

people
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8294845/luissantos_people.jpg

pregnant (human)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8294845/luissantos_pregnant.jpg

generally it looks like regions are returning the same images...

logged in -  clear cache - fireforx 5.0.1 - Mac os X -  15.50 London Time - Italy

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34112912/business_15.50_london_TIme.png

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34112912/cityscape_15.50_london_TIme.png

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34112912/classroom_15.50_london_TIme.png

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34112912/food_15.50_london_TIme.png

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34112912/people_15.50_london_TIme.png

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34112912/Pregnant_human_15.50_london_TIme.png

I did best match, and four of the words. Don't know what this all means, that's for someone who wants to analyze it?

From an initial look, what I make of it is that there definitely is a location factor there - in the food results, there is a photo of Jamon that shows up high in the Spanish results, that isn't in the others (for example). The cityscapes have some different files too, and each of the searches has a bit of a different order.

--BUT--

So far the differences seem to be in a handful of files, rather than drastically different. The way I'd interpret that is:
1. the weight of results from the US is often so overwhelming that it will take precedence over however much of a regional search best match factor is dialed in
2. There isn't actually that much of a localised search weighting in the best match.
3. There isn't enough regionally specific content in some areas.
4. There aren't enough buyers/ history data in some places to significantly shift the best match

It would still be interesting to get some results from Australia, Africa or Asia, even if the times are a bit off - I suspect things aren't changing so quickly that the time is all that important.

In case anyone is interested, this is what I get for the "cityscape" search when I'm logged in - (my profile location is set to Australia):


I'm thinking this also means that if the IP location and profile location are different, the profile takes precedence.

Thanks to everyone who posted screenshots!

Honestly I�m quite happy with the results. If it were more localized, it would mean that some of us could lose a lot of money. As a contributor of a small european country I guess my files would hardly sell anywhere if the search was localized too much.
The way it is now it seems that there is some local content, but not too much.

Honestly I�m quite happy with the results. If it were more localized, it would mean that some of us could lose a lot of money. As a contributor of a small european country I guess my files would hardly sell anywhere if the search was localized too much.
The way it is now it seems that there is some local content, but not too much.

From what I understand the search is meant to factor in the content that buyers actually purchase from some locations, rather than where the seller comes from. So if you're producing images specifically for the US market from Europe it shouldn't penalise you. 

To me if iStock is serious about going beyond the US market, then the results don't show a strong enough local flavour.