Author Topic: iStock site rank down significantly after changes (Read 12993 times)

jsmithzz · « **on:** October 18, 2014, 09:20 »

I think the numbers speak for themselves.

ShadySue · « **Reply #1 on:** October 18, 2014, 09:37 »

I think it's either an Alexa issue or the buyers have left all 'Big Four' in droves:

Difydave · « **Reply #2 on:** October 18, 2014, 09:43 »

^ Perhaps Alexa have changed the way they count views.

jsmithzz · « **Reply #3 on:** October 18, 2014, 09:47 »

Thanks for posting the comparison. Sorry, didn't mean to mislead. I just saw the drop off and the timing of it and assumed the worse. But yes, that does beg the questions as to whether or not something is up with Alexa.

ShadySue · « **Reply #4 on:** October 18, 2014, 10:01 »

Quote from: jsmithzz on October 18, 2014, 09:47

Thanks for posting the comparison. Sorry, didn't mean to mislead. I just saw the drop off and the timing of it and assumed the worse. But yes, that does beg the questions as to whether or not something is up with Alexa.

I was just curious as to where the apparently disappeared buyers (from experience, it does seem as though they've been declining throughout the year) had gone.
Alexa does say that the metrics for all four sites are 'estimated'.
BTW, did you accidentally post SS's graph? Your graph above looks identical to SS's, but iS's is a bit different, and note the different vertical scale values:

Freedom · « **Reply #5 on:** October 18, 2014, 10:10 »

Perhaps Alexa ranks the whole month.

My Alamy chart always has a dip before sales come in in a given months. When I get sales, the chart will go up for the month.

bunhill · « **Reply #6 on:** October 18, 2014, 10:18 »

Quote from: jsmithzz on October 18, 2014, 09:20

I think the numbers speak for themselves.

Top right of those screenshots which Sue posted is the glaring clue:

"This site's metrics are estimated"

Estimated is a euphemism for meaningless

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #7 on:** October 18, 2014, 14:10 »

Quote from: bunhill on October 18, 2014, 10:18

Quote from: jsmithzz on October 18, 2014, 09:20
I think the numbers speak for themselves.

Top right of those screenshots which Sue posted is the glaring clue:

"This site's metrics are estimated"

Estimated is a euphemism for meaningless

From alexa.com regarding what estimated means:

"Not all websites implement our on-site analytics and publish the results. For these sites, we show estimated metrics based on traffic patterns across the web as a whole. We identify these patterns by looking at the activity of millions of web users throughout the world, and using data normalization to correct for any biases.

The more traffic a site gets, the more data we have to calculate estimated metrics. Estimates are more reliable the closer a site is to being ranked #1. Global traffic ranks of 100,000+ are subject to large fluctuations and should be considered rough estimates.

If a site has Certified Metrics instead of estimated, that means its owner has installed code allowing us to directly measure their traffic. These metrics have a greater level of accuracy, no matter what the ranking."

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #8 on:** October 18, 2014, 14:23 »

I don't understand the graphs, but I have been keeping track of the major stock site's alexa rankings (global and US) roughly monthly since March. There's no big falloff in ranking numbers for iStock - it was 462 global on Sept 9th and 471 on October 18th. Its US ranking dropped from 265 to 323. Shutterstock was 197/192 in September and 198/223 in October

Here's the file:

March 4 2014

Site Global/USA

IS 424 / 252
SS 216 / 194
Thinkstock 5,824 / 1,519
Getty 3,003 / 1,107
Fotolia 528 / (DE) 64
dreamstime 656 / 607
123rf 472 / 551
DepositPhotos 1,317 / 1,060
PhotoDune 2,886 / 2,018
Canstock 3,636 / 2,027
Alamy 16,001 / 12,010

May 28 2014

IS 447 / 270
SS 193 / 199
Thinkstock 4,413 / 1,240
Getty 2,091 / 854
Fotolia 511 / (DE) 67 (FR) 148 (US) 1,188
dreamstime 664 / 629
123rf 659 / 620
DepositPhotos 1,191 / 927
PhotoDune 2,662 / 1,662
Canstock 3,443 / 2,416
Alamy 14,293 / (GB) 1,517 (US) 15,090
DollarPhotoClub 5,086 / 1,700

June 30 2014

IS 450 / 272
SS 195 / 178
Thinkstock 4,408 / 1,284
Getty 2,374 / 1,090
Fotolia 511 / (DE) 68 (FR) 151 (US) 992
dreamstime 679 / 642
123rf 666 / 610
DepositPhotos 1,153 / 840
PhotoDune 2,572 / 1,504
Canstock 3,754 / 2,788
Alamy 14,168 / (GB) 1,577 (US) 15,159
DollarPhotoClub 3,516 / 1,472

July 28 2014

IS 454 / 299
SS 188 / 191
Thinkstock 4,493 / 1,499
Getty 2,418 / 975
Fotolia 515 / (DE) 63 (FR) 165 (US) 1,195
dreamstime 681 / 646
123rf 635 / 591
DepositPhotos 1,110 / 902
PhotoDune 2,524 / 1,663
Canstock 3,832 / 2,500
Alamy 13,166 / (GB) 1,590 (US) 11,383
DollarPhotoClub 2,766 / 1,395
Canva 3,436 / 1,138

Sept 9 2014

IS 462 / 265
SS 197 / 192
Thinkstock 5,220 / 1,493
Getty 2,490 / 929
Fotolia 524 / (DE) 69 (FR) 197 (US) 1,306
dreamstime 678 / 684
123rf 614 / 614
DepositPhotos 1,097 / 932
PhotoDune 2,472 / 1,655
Canstock 3,903 / 2,674
Alamy 12,448 / (GB) 1,351 (US) 12,991
DollarPhotoClub 2,368 / 1,258
Canva 2,378 / 964

Oct 18 2014

IS 471 / 323
SS 198 / 223
Thinkstock 5,275 / 1,545
Getty 2,447 / 850
Fotolia 567 / (DE) 74 (FR) 175 (US) 1,617
dreamstime 722 / 726
123rf 657 / 694
DepositPhotos 1,113 / 910
PhotoDune 2,684 / 2,227
Canstock 3,923 / 2,935
Alamy 11,845 / (GB) 1,996 (US) 11,726
DollarPhotoClub 2,215 / 1,186
Canva 2,196 / 1,059

goober · « **Reply #9 on:** October 21, 2014, 07:13 »

How fast is istock?

3.088 seconds, 79% of sites are faster.

PixelBytes · « **Reply #10 on:** October 21, 2014, 12:24 »

Quote from: goober on October 21, 2014, 07:13

How fast is istock?

3.088 seconds, 79% of sites are faster.

The speed of the tortoise and the reliability of the hare.

ShadySue · « **Reply #11 on:** October 21, 2014, 12:28 »

Quote from: goober on October 21, 2014, 07:13

How fast is istock?

3.088 seconds.

That must be on a superfast connection.

Difydave · « **Reply #12 on:** October 21, 2014, 13:44 »

I'm getting (roughly) 8 seconds on a 200 image pp search, and then the same to open one of the images in it's own buying page. Not very scientific. Me counting "A thousand and one etc". That's on a decently fast connection.
Opening up my own stats pages and so on is much slower.
Just to compare, I did the same test with Alamy on a 120 image pp search.
3 seconds.

Shelma1 · « **Reply #13 on:** October 21, 2014, 14:12 »

I'm on a super fast connection at work (we buy a lot of images). 3 seconds for iStock, 1 for the same search on SS. 2 on Getty, which is where we buy.

Difydave · « **Reply #14 on:** October 21, 2014, 14:45 »

Quote from: Shelma1 on October 21, 2014, 14:12

I'm on a super fast connection at work (we buy a lot of images). 3 seconds for iStock, 1 for the same search on SS. 2 on Getty, which is where we buy.

That's fast! You can't tell me next week's lottery numbers using that connection can you?

Shelma1 · « **Reply #15 on:** October 21, 2014, 15:17 »

I wish! It was kind of shocking to realize how slow my connection is at home.

stocked · « **Reply #16 on:** October 21, 2014, 17:42 »

They all lost to DPC:
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/dollarphotoclub.com

ShadySue · « **Reply #17 on:** October 21, 2014, 17:48 »

And Stocksy http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stocksy.com, which is odd because at the time of the OP, Alexa said there wasn't enough information about Stocksy and now, there is.

Alamy unsurprisingly, shows the same sharp dip as the 'big four'.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/alamy.com

Monkeyman · « **Reply #18 on:** January 12, 2015, 10:31 »

That steep dive around Sep-Oct 2014 is still there for all the major microstock sites. Wonder why.

And iStock is now down to global rank 826. Dreamstime is 896. I don't know how reliable this numbers are, but iStock's drop in the Alexa ranking certainly reflect my personal decrease in sales pretty well...

Monkeyman · « **Reply #19 on:** January 12, 2015, 11:40 »

Now iStock is down to 839.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #20 on:** January 12, 2015, 15:23 »

Quote from: Monkeyman on January 12, 2015, 10:31

...I don't know how reliable this numbers are, but iStock's drop in the Alexa ranking certainly reflect my personal decrease in sales pretty well...

Look at it another way, iStock's drop from early last year to now (in global Alexa rankings) is much, much larger than the other major players. I took a Getty & Thinkstock number from after their March announcement of free linking for most images (because their ratings really jumped up after that), but otherwise the numbers are from March 4, 2014 to Jan 12 2014.

iStock has dropped 49.5%, SS has dropped 27.3%, Dreamstime dropped 27%, Getty dropped 27.6%, Thinkstock 30%

Whatever overall changes might have affected the rankings for stock agencies as a group, iStock stands out as having had a much larger traffic drop. There might certainly be situations where revenues and income were up even on lower traffic (switching to fewer, much higher priced sales, for example) but given the earnings reports I read and what I hear from departing exclusives and even a few hanging on, that's not happening.

bunhill · « **Reply #21 on:** January 12, 2015, 16:01 »

How many times does it need to be said that Alexa is meaningless in this context ? Perhaps it is relevant in other situations.

Ask yourselves this: Do you know anyone who has the Alexa toolbar installed ? It is not even an option for Safari users - and Safari is the default browser on Macs which more and more people are using - and graphics folk have always been Mac users.

I am not defending iStock. I might be exclusive there but that's a legacy thing and I am mostly doing other stuff these days.

Monkeyman · « **Reply #22 on:** January 12, 2015, 19:17 »

Quote from: bunhill on January 12, 2015, 16:01

How many times does it need to be said that Alexa is meaningless in this context ? Perhaps it is relevant in other situations.

Ask yourselves this: Do you know anyone who has the Alexa toolbar installed ? It is not even an option for Safari users - and Safari is the default browser on Macs which more and more people are using - and graphics folk have always been Mac users.

I am not defending iStock. I might be exclusive there but that's a legacy thing and I am mostly doing other stuff these days.

Yes, it doesn't say all that much... and the ranking is also relative, which of course means that as soon as some other site (microstock or not) gets a higher position iStock will go down a step. But it's still a pretty big drop for iStock... weren't they around rank 150-200 a few years back?

Why don't you leave exclusivity? You might make more money. You didn't say anything about your sales but if you've stopped uploading I assume they're not fantastic at iStock at the moment.

bunhill · « **Reply #23 on:** January 13, 2015, 06:04 »

Quote from: Monkeyman on January 12, 2015, 19:17

Why don't you leave exclusivity? You might make more money. You didn't say anything about your sales but if you've stopped uploading I assume they're not fantastic at iStock at the moment.

I will not be surprised if iStock kill or substantially revise the exclusivity program themselves.

I have been barely uploading - mostly just stuff which was on my drive already + a few snaps. But if I were to drop exclusivity first it would not be because I expect to make more money with my legacy RF images by uploading them elsewhere. That would be unrealistic. I would probably even delete much of my legacy content completely - some of it is very weak and I don't want to spend my life farming old content - only the stuff I still think works okay.

For the past 18 months or more I have been building a completely different portfolio of RM images at Alamy. Slowly at first, but I am very pleased with how that has gone. It is much more what I think I am about and they are friendly. I have completely changed the way in which I take pictures. In some ways I would quite like to start uploading some RF content to Alamy. That would be a positive motivation to drop iStock exclusivity but I have not decided and am in no hurry. I also have an active (currently empty) contributor account at Shutterstock. And they are super friendly and helpful to deal with. I would not bother with any of the other microstocks.

Petr Toman · « **Reply #24 on:** January 13, 2015, 07:26 »

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=shutterstock%2C%20fotolia%2C%20istock%2C%20alamy&cmpt=q&tz=

Well quite interesting is also the google trend. Check it out....and dont even try to put there term "Getty"

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Author Topic: iStock site rank down significantly after changes (Read 12993 times)

jsmithzz

ShadySue

Difydave

jsmithzz

ShadySue

Freedom

bunhill

Jo Ann Snover

Jo Ann Snover

goober

PixelBytes

ShadySue

Difydave

Shelma1

Difydave

Shelma1

stocked

ShadySue

Monkeyman

Monkeyman

Jo Ann Snover

bunhill

Monkeyman

bunhill

Petr Toman

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