A month ago, I came to the conclusion that the best match on iStock is a big prejudiced fake (as I suspected before), based on a little experiment with one shot of my last uploaded batch there (July).
It's not art but it seems to be what microstock customers like, so what the heck. I's simple, cheap to do, and prone to be copied soon.

The relevant search is "hands cards playing" ,and the shot is here. Just this little experiment. All searches were done not logged in and in the main search box on 4 (6) sites.

On Shutterstock it immediately started to sell, and with the relevant search terms, it is on position #6 today.

On iStock with the same search > 972 search results for Human Hand (The Human Body) AND Cards (Leisure Games) it is on the second last page. Actually my 3 photos (on white or at a poker table) with hands holding cards are in the last 2 pages. The two first pages are infested with a considerable part of irrelevant (as to my search subject)  images of exclusives and Vetta.

On Dreamstime, It's at position #1 (probably because the default not logged in search engine is "relevance").

On Fotolia it's on page 5 (1819 shots, 38 images per page).

(on StockFresh, it's in position #1 too, not surprisingly since the collection is still small; at Veer, I can't find it back amongst the 582 images, but I noted before that Veer's search engine is defective).

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What does this little survey mean? Simply that there are a couple of sites (iStock the most, Fotolia less) that take contributor karma (part of it being exclusivity) into account, not the merits of the image by itself. That's not what a buyer wants!
I came to that conclusion already when I started buying a year ago for a media group, finding the shots what I wanted the fastest on Dreamstime, with the worst match on iStock. It was just nice to see this confirmed in this little experiment.

There is a little truth here for some sites: a buyer wants the right shot, he doesn't care what ranking a prima donna exclusive has, how loud he yays at the forums, and whether or not he has to pay his mortgage from it.

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I didn't mingle in the discussion about iStock's pay cut for independents nor in the cry to stop uploading there, for the simple reason I gave up on them already last August. My upload there last July was the last one and I already uninstalled Deepmeta 2 months ago. As an aggravation, they don't let me out of their PP: the box keeps being ticked. I deleted my iStock link from about 1500 pages all over the net the past week, not out of vengeance but because when I leave, those links are useless anyways.

I'm very grateful to iStock that they added insult to injury with this pay cut, since it made me feel that my decision (not to upload any more) in August was right. As some exclusives stated here, iStock does the independents with their snapshots a big favor since they lose money on them. We can turn this into a win-win situation then. I'm sure iStock will thrive on prime content of German restroom locks and Santas giving the blurred finger. So let's all be happy.

I think it's a nice, useful image. how about we evaluate the originality of one of yours?

Not everybody is as cowardly as you to hide his profile links.

Is it possible that the rigged best match and all the special privileges for IS's pets are there because those pets could not compete without them?

Well most are great photographers so they would probably. As a contributor, I really hope that iStock can keep making them feel special so they don't flood SS and DT. 
As a buyer (and the few times I tried there), it just takes much longer on iStock to find the right image by their crooked best match. I should note I'm scouting for daily media, not for commercial or templates, so the extra Editorial on DT is a big asset in this regard. Media don't care.
If for instance they need a typical photo of Prague, they will prefer an editorial shot with lively people and neons over a sterile commercial shot with everything cloned out.

Since we have a time slot of 1hr (in which I have to read the article [Indian designers don't understand Dutch], find the image, pass it, then it gets incorporated), they also don't have time to open illustrations in Illustrator. They want easy to grab rasterized stuff. On all these points, Dreamstime is in the advantage, but not all buyers are created equal. As a rule of thumb, you can say you can find equally good ("good enough") stuff on DT as on IS, just much faster and with more choice, and cheaper.

The crooked best match on IS (with their stupid CV) works also against their own exclusives. A while ago I needed a photo of crew serving food in the interior of an airplane. "airplane serving food" gave just one unusable shot at DT. Looking at IS, also just 1 unusable image. Now I know for sure that SLocke has a marvelous collection of inside shots of an airplane with crew, but I couldn't find them on IS. Same on SS. Changed the terms to "attendant serving food", "stewardess serving food" : nothing, also not on IS. I looked for "Sean Locke" on IS: "0 search results for sean AND Curly Hair". Yeah right. Life can be hard for buyers too. 

Well at least you know one of the many holes in the market now... I'm sure you can find this kind of stuff on macro, but that's above my budget.

Next you guys are going to tell me you guys didn't know that inspectors can self-inspect their images (or at least they used to be able to).

Completely untrue

Quote from: Saska on September 16, 2010, 16:37

An example from today:
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-14252406-christmas-presents.php

And what a fabulously innovative and creative idea! Taking a photo of Christmas presents! Who would ever have thought of that! No wonder IS wanted to rush it to the head of the line, ahead of all the less creative IS exclusives. Oh, 'less creative IS exclusives,' that's redundant, sorry.

2 years ago, i had (basically) the exact same shot rejected for copyright (wrapping paper), but it's okay if you're an employee...barf...

Quote from: dgilder on September 16, 2010, 17:35

Next you guys are going to tell me you guys didn't know that inspectors can self-inspect their images (or at least they used to be able to).

Completely untrue

It is true, I have heard this directly from several inspectors.  Maybe they changed the rules at some point, but this is definitely something that used to happen.

Well it's true there is no way to search on a contributor's real name.  Maybe that will change when they roll out the new search interface next month or whenever...  BTW, I didn't have "serving" as a keyword.  I do now .

Not through the search box, but you can put www.istockphoto.com/sjlocke in the URI line and get taken to your home page. Then click on view porfolio, then 'search within' from the relevant box in the left hand column.

Quote from: sjlocke on September 17, 2010, 05:07

Well it's true there is no way to search on a contributor's real name.  Maybe that will change when they roll out the new search interface next month or whenever...  BTW, I didn't have "serving" as a keyword.  I do now .

Not through the search box, but you can put www.istockphoto.com/sjlocke in the URI line and get taken to your home page. Then click on view porfolio, then 'search within' from the relevant box in the left hand column.

Oh sure, you can do that in the advanced search too.  But if you didn't know me as "sjlocke" then you'd be in trouble.  On Getty, you can search my name in quotes.

sure, but we're talking about apples and oranges anyways, since the point of highlighting this example is the incorrect assumption that this contributor is an admin/inspector/employee. she is none of those things. she is a contributor only, which negates the whole theory behind this thread.

sure, but we're talking about apples and oranges anyways, since the point of highlighting this example is the incorrect assumption that this contributor is an admin/inspector/employee. she is none of those things. she is a contributor only, which negates the whole theory behind this thread.

I agree, but she still got files inspected in a couple of hours

I've had files turn around in hours. it's a fluke, it happens. many times my files get through in 24 hours. I'm always surprised, since the exclusive inspection queue is more like 3-5 days lately. there is no evidence of anything nefarious in your example.

I have no problems with a site giving preference or being less picky to some members, unless it's about image quality. I only dislike when they deny this happens.