MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: dragonblade on October 16, 2023, 07:46
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Just now, I did a search for one of my photos on iStock. The image happens to be a landscape photograph that is dominated by a large tree. I then checked the keywords and I was really surprised to find the word 'animal' there. A word that I did not add. And it is totally irrelevant. There are no animals in the photo. Ridiculous.
How often does this happen at iStock? It would be a huge hassle going through most or all of your photos to see if this issue is widespread. And extremely time consuming because you would have to search for each photo like a buyer in order to see the keywords. When I view my port (as a single collection) the keywords are not visible.
I recall reading that as contributors, we can get punished with the use of irrelevant keywords. Something about photos appearing in lower search positions when they're passed over by frustrated buyers. I'm not sure how much truth there is to that.
At iStock, it looks like you can get punished through no fault of your own if they decide to add silly keywords to your photos. And you may not even notice.
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Quite often, I will notice keywords added that I had not included, but they usually make sense. In fact, I pick up new keywords for my Lightroom Keyword List by studying these new keywords.
Also, istockphoto nearly always adds "no people", horizontal or vertical, and USA to my images, where appropriate.
But, again, the keyword additions they make to my images usually make sense. To add "animals" to an image that doesn't have animals in it ... is a mistake. It may not make any difference to the popularity of your image, however.
But you can always contact istockphoto and ask them to remove it and see what they do.
Just my two cents.
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Gosh, I didn't realise that the adding of additional keywords by iStock was so common. Yes, I'll definitely open a support ticket and get them to remove this 'animal' keyword from my photo of a tree.
I do find this annoying because prospective buyers will assume that I added this keyword myself. They would likely think that I'm trying to mislead them. One of the ridiculous things that I notice when I browse stock agencies is the instances of highly irrelevant keywords. People would add all kinds of different animals and random things to the metadata of images which don't feature any of those subjects. There are also photos of well known cities that include names of other cities from different parts of the world. One of the most ridiculous examples Ive seen was a photo that had a description which identified a koala in a tree. But the actual photograph was an underwater image featuring a turtle swimming over coral.
As for myself, I try to add keywords that are relevant to the image. This situation sucks because now I'm lumped together with the people who add nonsense keywords to their photos. And it may not be just this tree photo that's affected. There could be others too. It would be a huge hassle searching for them though.
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Actually, Ive just thought of something. There could be a reason why the keyword 'animal' was added to my photo of a tree. Previously, I had made the mistake of adding 'fauna' to the metadata when I meant to add 'flora.' It's super rare when I make those kinds of mistakes though yea I was going to try and correct that after submission (with another support ticket.) So I wonder if the inclusion of the word 'fauna' triggered some automatic word generator to add 'animal' there as well.
And I do have another recent tree photograph submission where I mistakenly added 'fauna' instead of 'flora.' Maybe I was doing the keywording for both images at the same time (can't recall exactly.) I'll check that one out on iStock as well and see if 'animal' is added there too.
Edit: Yes, the keyword 'animal' is included with the other tree photograph. So it's a fair chance that it was the 'fauna' keyword that is responsible for this (a word that shouldn't be there.) I'll ask them to remove 'animal' and 'fauna' and add 'flora.'
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I checked the keywords again on the second tree image and the word 'fauna' isn't even there. It has been removed.
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yes,"I stick" change the titles and descriptions and keywords in some cases,maybe for some legal reason or to improve the search of the content,or translation problems or a bug? who knows! :D
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Actually, Ive just thought of something. There could be a reason why the keyword 'animal' was added to my photo of a tree. Previously, I had made the mistake of adding 'fauna' to the metadata when I meant to add 'flora.' It's super rare when I make those kinds of mistakes though yea I was going to try and correct that after submission (with another support ticket.) So I wonder if the inclusion of the word 'fauna' triggered some automatic word generator to add 'animal' there as well.
I think you may have found the answer to why "animal" was added to your image. istock will from time to time substitute one keyword for another. Just today for example, on one of my accepted images, I had included the keywords "alien planet" and istock replaced it with "fictional planet" ... that kind of thing is pretty common, and is part of their Controlled Vocabulary.
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Actually, Ive just thought of something. There could be a reason why the keyword 'animal' was added to my photo of a tree. Previously, I had made the mistake of adding 'fauna' to the metadata when I meant to add 'flora.' It's super rare when I make those kinds of mistakes though yea I was going to try and correct that after submission (with another support ticket.) So I wonder if the inclusion of the word 'fauna' triggered some automatic word generator to add 'animal' there as well.
And I do have another recent tree photograph submission where I mistakenly added 'fauna' instead of 'flora.' Maybe I was doing the keywording for both images at the same time (can't recall exactly.) I'll check that one out on iStock as well and see if 'animal' is added there too.
Edit: Yes, the keyword 'animal' is included with the other tree photograph. So it's a fair chance that it was the 'fauna' keyword that is responsible for this (a word that shouldn't be there.) I'll ask them to remove 'animal' and 'fauna' and add 'flora.'
Yes and I wouldn't have known this if you didn't start the thread. "Fauna (PL: faunae or faunas) is all of the animal life present in a particular region or time. "
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Ive looked at keywords from more of my images in my iStock port and I'm starting to notice a pretty serious issue. There are some important keywords (added by me in Deepmeta) that are not present. For example - names of buildings, street names etc. These really need to be included so that buyers can find the images. There is a tutorial video on Deepmeta that states that some keywords will not be recognised by iStock but will still be included if you manually select them. But that is not true at all. I did manually select these words in Deepmeta and they are not visible among the keywords under the photos when viewing them in my port.
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You are missing a HUGE thing.
There are what "you" think buyers will want to find an image, and then there are what buyers "actually" use to find an image.
Based on the description your provided of your image, it sounds potentially highly relevant. I.e., a buyer might look for something like "animal background". Aka - "no animals" - because they want to put something on it (i.e., "come to the animal fair! explore more animals!", etc). If they are adding it in, (a) it is probably automated, (b) in this case, it actually sounds potentially highly relevant.
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Ive looked at keywords from more of my images in my iStock port and I'm starting to notice a pretty serious issue. There are some important keywords (added by me in Deepmeta) that are not present. For example - names of buildings, street names etc. These really need to be included so that buyers can find the images. There is a tutorial video on Deepmeta that states that some keywords will not be recognised by iStock but will still be included if you manually select them. But that is not true at all. I did manually select these words in Deepmeta and they are not visible among the keywords under the photos when viewing them in my port.
If they're not in the CV, they don't show up on the file page.
However, they are 'usually' searchable.
Tell you what's even worse. Their 'enhanced' search function, which more or less shows you what you wanted to see first, then a whole load of semi-random stuff underneath. At least you can turn it off, but it took me a wee while to notice that: it seems to have been made 'on' by default. ::)
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Based on the description your provided of your image, it sounds potentially highly relevant. I.e., a buyer might look for something like "animal background". Aka - "no animals" - because they want to put something on it
More than likely, a buyer will use the word 'animal' in a search because they are searching for animals. And there are no animals featured in my two photos of trees so the keyword 'animal' is highly irrelevant and shouldn't be there.
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If they're not in the CV, they don't show up on the file page.
However, they are 'usually' searchable.
Just to be clear, Sue ... does this mean that keywords not in the Controlled Vocabulary but that you have included in your submission, are in fact still attached to the image, even though they are not visible?
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If they're not in the CV, they don't show up on the file page.
However, they are 'usually' searchable.
Just to be clear, Sue ... does this mean that keywords not in the Controlled Vocabulary but that you have included in your submission, are in fact still attached to the image, even though they are not visible?
That's what I've found, though I can't claim it's universal.
Try with some of your own photos to see.
(BTW, It seems that at sometime over the past couple of years, a lot of words have been removed from the CV.)
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“ I do find this annoying because prospective buyers will assume that I added this keyword myself. They would likely think that I'm trying to mislead them.”
It’s funny you think buyers would care about this.
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“ I do find this annoying because prospective buyers will assume that I added this keyword myself. They would likely think that I'm trying to mislead them.”
It’s funny you think buyers would care about this.
Well when I do searches on stock agencies and come across highly irrelevant keywords that have absolutely nothing do with the images, I don't have very high praise for the contributors who choose to use those words. They come across as silly and desperate. I don't want to be lumped together with those kinds of individuals.
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“ I do find this annoying because prospective buyers will assume that I added this keyword myself. They would likely think that I'm trying to mislead them.”
It’s funny you think buyers would care about this.
You'd be surprised - I got a notification on Dreamstime a while ago, that a customer had flagged my image for use of irrelevant keywords, so some seem to care.
Btw - It was an image of a parrot and the flagged keywords were "parakeet, quail, budgie, finch, chicken, dog" - I added none of these keywords. I do not even know what "parakeet" and "quali" means. I assume they are bird breeds, but I do not know these names :o And I certainly would not add keywords like chicken or dog to a parrot image. So apparently Dreamstime too adds random keywords - or they use a very poor translation tool for keywords, because when I go to that image I don't see any of these weird keywords.
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I've had 'adult' and 'only adults' added to some files I had accepted today, where 'only adults' is not accurate. Also 'only women' added to another file, ditto.
Very annoying. They keep putting out little nippy notes about how important it is to keyword accurately, then they add irrelevant keywords (I checked my files in my submission folder in case I'd made a mistake).
And don't even think about the categories at the bottom of the page. There are two sets of categories which they add. Some might be accurate but very vague, most at the bottom of the page are inaccurate, sometimes 5/5 totally wrong.
Added: having enquired about the additions, it seems it's a keyword mapping feature. ::)