Author Topic: The new IS keywording and search system (Read 6340 times)

madelaide · « **on:** November 09, 2006, 18:25 »

If I understand the way their search tool is set now, if someone types "young people" only images in which the expression "young people" is one of the keywords will be shown, is it right? So if someone has the separate words only, it will not be shown even after the perfect match, am I right?

If so, this really sucks, because we have to imagine all the possible combinations such as "young people" "young man" "young men" "young woman" "young women" "young person" and so on. Even if the perfect matches are shown first as they must be the more relevant, but the matches of separate words are still shown after then, in order to have our images well positioned in searches we have to think of all these possibilities.

Regards,
Adelaide

Bateleur · « **Reply #1 on:** November 10, 2006, 01:57 »

I think you're partly right. Here's my experience ...

I have a bog-standard shot of a Swiss flag flying against a blue sky with, obviously, the keywords "swiss" and "flag" attached. I've just done a search on those two keywords.

A mere 5 images came up, only one of which was a real Swiss flag (and one which has such a minute Swiss flag in the picture that you need a microscope to see it.

)

My Swiss flag isn't amongst them.

However, under the keywords box is a small message, "We found the term "swiss flag" as a phrase. Would you like to search for swiss AND flag instead?" If you choose that option a load more images come up, and mine is amongst them.

It's not a very obvious choice and if a designer is rushed for time s/he will probably ignore it and choose one of the images presented.

Of course, I've now added the phrase to my picture's keywords. But, like you say, it's going to be nigh on impossible to think up every possible phrase for for every image.

I feel really, really, really sorry for those who have gone exclusive with IS and have huge portfolios.

Bateleur · « **Reply #2 on:** November 10, 2006, 02:16 »

Oh boy! The plot thickens.

I went back and followed this up a bit further. When I clicked on the choice "We found the term "swiss flag" as a phrase. Would you like to search for swiss AND flag instead?" I got another 7 images. There was the flag of Djibouti (where?), the flag of Australia, and a shot of downtown Georgetown, Colorado, with a Norwegian flag in it, plus four other distantly related images ... but no true Swiss flag.

I've fired off a complaint to IS.

Now I'll probably get banned for life.

leaf · « **Reply #3 on:** November 10, 2006, 03:25 »

so in your example, would we need to have

swiss flag
flag
swiss

as tags, or could we just have

swiss flag

and get all the searches for the term "swiss flag" as well as the individual word searches such as "swiss"

Bateleur · « **Reply #4 on:** November 10, 2006, 04:19 »

Quote from: leaf on November 10, 2006, 03:25

so in your example, would we need to have

swiss flag
flag
swiss

as tags, or could we just have

swiss flag

and get all the searches for the term "swiss flag" as well as the individual word searches such as "swiss"

I've no idea I'm afraid. I've modified the keywords on the image, adding the phrase "swiss flag" and checking the Switzerland (Central Europe)
and Swiss Culture (European Culture) boxes that pop up, but it still doesn't show up in my test search.

Mind you, it does say give them 24h to make the changes.

If nothing's happened by tomorrow I'm gonna complain again. Getting the Djibouti flag, which doesn't even have the word "swiss" in it's title, description, keywords or categories is totally crazy.

yingyang0 · « **Reply #5 on:** November 10, 2006, 09:25 »

Quote from: Bateleur on November 10, 2006, 02:16

Oh boy! The plot thickens.

I went back and followed this up a bit further. When I clicked on the choice "We found the term "swiss flag" as a phrase. Would you like to search for swiss AND flag instead?" I got another 7 images. There was the flag of Djibouti (where?), the flag of Australia, and a shot of downtown Georgetown, Colorado, with a Norwegian flag in it, plus four other distantly related images ... but no true Swiss flag.

I've fired off a complaint to IS.

Now I'll probably get banned for life.

Wait. You "fired off a complaint" because you and many others haven't followed directions on disambiguating your files? It would be one thing for a designer to complain, but for a contributor to complain because the contributor hasn't done what they were suppose to do seems a little strange to me.

Bateleur · « **Reply #6 on:** November 10, 2006, 15:52 »

Quote from: yingyang0 on November 10, 2006, 09:25

Wait. You "fired off a complaint" because you and many others haven't followed directions on disambiguating your files? It would be one thing for a designer to complain, but for a contributor to complain because the contributor hasn't done what they were suppose to do seems a little strange to me.

No.

I fired off a complaint about the Djibouti flag, which had no 'swiss' in its keywording at all, and the Australia Flag which doesn't have 'swiss' in its keywording either, but has just about everything imaginable including 'garlic', 'onions', 'paris', 'markets', 'euro', 'olympics', 'skin' and the names of a load of big cities in Australia. It seems suspiciously like 'keyword spamming' to me.

And I asked them, ever so politely, if they could tell me how come, when I search on the terms 'swiss flag', those two pop up ... as 2 out of only 7 images I stress. And not a single one of the 7 images a true Swiss flag.

Of course mine wasn't there if I hadn't disambiguated it as instructed. I accept that.

madelaide · « **Reply #7 on:** November 10, 2006, 16:21 »

I have started reviewing my old photos. Yesterday I edited a series, all called "Stock market analysis" and all having basically the same keywords (including the phrase "stock market" and the word analysis, of course). Some of these images are among my best selling there.

So I tried a search for "stock market analysis", what promptly returns 22 images, one of which is mine (one of the recent ones, with now dlds). They also offer me some meanings to choose from, I choose "Stock Market (Finance)" and "Analyzing (Looking)", which were the meanings I chose when editing my files (in the keyword list, they're the first and seventh entries, respectively). This returns then 198 images. The first two 40-images pages have none of mine. On the third page, the two newest ones appear. The other four ones do not appear at all!!

I love the new system.

Regards,
Adelaide

cb34inc · « **Reply #8 on:** November 13, 2006, 17:54 »

Istock went from best to last for me after the new keywording system went online. I will be lucky if in November I earn 1/5th of what I earned 2 months ago. But I guess it's just me. Other people report improved sales. I guess they are getting mine. $:-\$
I just do not know what was so bad about my old keywords that they do not work with the new system. I went over some of my formerly good-selling files - and the keywords are fine. Totally sux!

P.S. Apparently their system does not believe "wave" is a word.

Bateleur · « **Reply #9 on:** November 14, 2006, 02:41 »

Quote from: cb34inc on November 13, 2006, 17:54

P.S. Apparently their system does not believe "wave" is a word.

And I'm not particularly religious, so it doesn't bother me, but I can see some evangelicals getting hot under the collar with iStock's keyword 'God (Fictional being)'

madelaide · « **Reply #10 on:** November 19, 2006, 12:28 »

I hate this new disambiguation thing...

I normally use Netscape but when uploading my latest images I noticed that one keyword (CD box) wasn't shown, instead in that line all I had was the remove button and a "Did you mean" box that would not open.

So I went to Internet Explorer and the box offered me a choice to "Add CD Box", which I did. Now when I tried to save it, I get a page as if I had not entered ANY keyword.

I went to a previous upload, in which I had left the empty keyword, it was now showing "CD box" on the Tag column, without any meanining in the Terms column, and if I tried to save it I would get the same error msg. All keywords are however there when I open the file again, including the "CD box" expression. I believe that this tag is now doomed and any other submission with it (there are more to upload) will return this error msg.

And we still can't copy disambiguations for a series of images... (*sigh*)

Regards,
Adelaide

leaf · « **Reply #11 on:** November 19, 2006, 12:52 »

i wonder how long before enough people get fed up with istock that they start to notice a decided decline in their submissions that they realize they have to change something.

auto-keywords and ftp for starters.

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Author Topic: The new IS keywording and search system (Read 6340 times)

madelaide

Bateleur

Bateleur

leaf

Bateleur

yingyang0

Bateleur

madelaide

cb34inc

Bateleur

madelaide

leaf

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