There is all this talk over at Camp-iStock about tweaking the dials on the best match. This is what I was talking about when I said before about "too little and too late" measures to try and breathe life back into the site.

All that's going to come of this "dial tweaking" is a few different files are going to sell than the types of files that have been selling most recently. Is it going to increase sales for people? No, how could it?

As we already know, best match only controls what files people buy, but not how many.

So while people have hopes of a best match tweak messiah, you can't sell more files to people who aren't there to buy them in the first place.

And Getty isn't going to do what they really need to do to increase traffic which are things like lowering prices and spending money on marketing campaigns. So everyone should get used to the status quo of sales and not be hoping for anything more. You will never see Getty reaching into their pockets to spend money to make money unless it is to buyout another small stock agency and bury it.

I also don't think we have hit bottom yet on iStock. Many people this month are poised to sell less than they did even last month.

That means if we follow the heavily declining buying trend that started in September, then February could be even worse than January.

I guess that serves us right for believing in fairies. Maybe the next person from HQ who shows up with empty promises of ways to improve our sales will be named Santa.

For me, January 2013 is the worst month since I began working for iS more seriously. It's not just the regular best match changes that used to happen and shift the numbers. This was something so much worse and very very odd. I almost stopped selling my backbone bestsellers and E+ files.

But, if we look at alexa rankings it does look that iS is slightly improving in terms of traffic, reach and pageviews. At one point we can see that iS & SS touched. While that's kind of pathetic (highest point of iS touching lowest of SS), it is improving.

I've just done two of my regular checks. In both cases my files have gone down, and in both cases, some totally wrong (spammed or in one case a wrong language mapping) files are 'above the line'.

I think the best match at iStock has always been a bit of a scapegoat for individuals low sales.

Hmmm, I've had two files that started off well (for me), then sank without trace, having (a FEW) sales in the last few weeks after three years with none, having apparently risen to visibility again.

Quote from: ivanjekic on January 25, 2013, 07:09

For me, January 2013 is the worst month since I began working for iS more seriously. It's not just the regular best match changes that used to happen and shift the numbers. This was something so much worse and very very odd. I almost stopped selling my backbone bestsellers and E+ files.

But, if we look at alexa rankings it does look that iS is slightly improving in terms of traffic, reach and pageviews. At one point we can see that iS & SS touched. While that's kind of pathetic (highest point of iS touching lowest of SS), it is improving.

Switch the Alexa graph to show max and you'll see that is just the recovery after the Dec end Jan start slump that happens every year

The recent increase in traffic is partly because of the interest in the google screw over by contributors.  Sales this month are down.  The site is dying.

The only way it could help is if they put all their wholly owned content at the back of the searches but that is unlikely to happen.