Agency Based Discussion > iStockPhoto.com

Keyword added to my photo without my knowledge

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dragonblade:
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.

The Mighty Jungle:
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.

dragonblade:
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.

dragonblade:
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.'

dragonblade:
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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