Are the first few key words or the image name weighted in the search.  With all the really far fetched key words it would seem that sites / agencies should give (for example) the first 5 words special weight.  Fine art america could especially use this.

So are all the key words given the same weight during search ??

In iStock, only the keywords feature in the internal search, and their system reorders them, sometimes even before the file goes 'live'.

Quote from: ShadySue on February 04, 2014, 07:31

In iStock, only the keywords feature in the internal search, and their system reorders them, sometimes even before the file goes 'live'.

Can you explain further please  ??

No, it's their system - they don't give away their secrets. And it changes from time to time anyway.
In addition to the initial change, files are supposed to gain keyword relevancy. It worked for a while.
 Nowadays they don't even seem to check keywords on new files and many are appallingly keyworded. They seem not to want to address this.
It's all moot anyway. New files drop in the best match sort very quickly and if they dare to get some dls, they sink even faster.

Thanks Sue and luissantos.  It would seem a special slot for 5 key words would do istock some good.  I remember searching istock for ideas to see how many zillion were already uploaded and the relevancy was terrible, it must make some customers angry trying to sort through the irrelevant images to get to what they want.

They used to take keywording seriously and to reject files which were badly keyworded, but now it's all such a mess. (see my best match thread here which was prompted by your post).

this is unbelievable, I have "hearted" Sue in 2 posts and someone minus them, get a life man

It's been happening constantly over the past couple of weeks, almost instantly anyone hearts me it gets negated, even for indisputably factual posts. Don't worry, but thanks for the vote of confidence. 

Quote from: luissantos84 on February 04, 2014, 08:54

this is unbelievable, I have "hearted" Sue in 2 posts and someone minus them, get a life man

There, I added a new heart to you and Liz. But it wasn't me who gave her thumbs down. Her posts are really good, pertinent and she is good at not mud slinging. I usually read her posts top to bottom, along with Joanne's, because they are well thought out and helpful.

Oh, thank you but I don't belong in the same class as JoAnne.

I've been back and forth with BigStock several times about this, after searching for my own images and discovering that I couldn't find them if I was using words that only existed in the title and not in the tags. First BS assured me that title / tags / description are all indexed & searchable, then they said - quote - "our search algorithms vary"!

Luckily, I found a link that allowed me to add new tags to already approved images, so I've been round all my images and made sure that certain important words in the title now also exist as tags... I hadn't been able to find that page just by browsing around in the "my account" area.

For BS at least, it seems that it's only about the tags...