But they didn't do it by manipulating the search.  Search positions remained stable but sales dropped significantly.  It seems the way they did it was to limit what registered buyers could see - in other words the search results seen by individual buyers were not necessarily the same as the results seen by contributors or visitors.  iStock themselves confirmed that they could 'tailor' the search results for all registered buying accounts.

Hi, I can verify your claim. I work in an advertising agency and regularly buy pictures at SS. What I have noticed is that when you are logged in the results change completely. I would even say that they are sometimes worse and do not deliver what you are looking for. Therefore, we are always looking for photos when we are not logged in and only log in for the purchase process. Unfortunately I do not know exactly when it started.


https://imgur.com/a/ufAaZ#jayJi6i