Use a Rank Tracker. SEOBook has a good one which sits in your browser as an add-on tool. You can save keyword lists and track Google, Yahoo and Bing. The nice thing is it gives a vanilla return which isn't influenced by your being signed in to your Google account.

I had 2 different interests - where do my own sites appear in Google and here do my images appear.  I checked the first 3 pages of results.

The table shows some results - I found there were big differences in whether I included the tags 'stock' and 'image'. Without the extra tags I was more likely to find my own sites - the 'cascoly' column shows the page on which my site appeared.

The image column shows how many of my images appeared on the first page - this requires the 'stock' and 'image' tags.  The total column gives total references to my pix - almost all of these are various microstock agencies.

So question is how many people use 'stock' or 'image' and how many of these are our buyers?


search string         image   total   cascoly
bare winter aspens   stock   image      24   
bare winter aspens      image      15   
hindu shaman         5   10   2
hindu shaman   stock   image   11   27   
mani rimdu   stock   image      21   1
mani rimdu      image      8   1
moose walking       image   4   11   
moose walking   stock   image   7   15   
penguin diving   stock   image   5   9   
india markets         1   1   1
india markets      image   2   3   

Google images gives 32,500,000 returns for Eiffel tower. You'd be doing well to get onto the  first page no matter what you do.

Not necessarily, if you open an account with google, signed in with their services etc.. end keep being signed in while you conduct searches, certain things related to you, such as a website, will come up on top regardless.... Eiffel tower, come on the first page for me only me if I am signed in while it is probably in the 1,000,000Th position for everybody else.  Google try to personalize your searches to your specs.. Anyway this is confirmed with other tools have tried recently. Eiffel tower, would not be sufficient for any image site anyway. I would imagine that most image buyers making searches from Google would insert the words, stock image, or at least, image, in addition to any other keywords.
Denis

Quote from: cybernesco on January 13, 2012, 13:39

search results were skewed by the fact I was signed into my Google account when I made those tests.  The search engine algorithm seems to take into consideration the site owner being signed-in.

To me that seems weird - and pointless.     

I don't think it is weird or pointless, maybe unwanted. Let me explain,  I did open an account with Google + which is their version of facebook, and like facebook I did post a few lines about my website. In addition I did open a Google blog account with similar lines. Now if I sign in and do Google searches thereafter, the algorithm will probably pickup my interests from those lines I wrote in Google + as well as google blogs.  The algorithm will make a priority to show my website on top because I already shown an interest in other Google areas with links. Obviously, this is meant to create priorities according to what it sees about you. Therefore it could be anything and not just because I am the site owner.

Similarely, these days, often I see iStockphoto banners being advertised on many websites I visited and see my own images showing up on banners.  The reason I see my images on those banners is because I visit my own iStockphoto galley often and therefore somehow that banner knows about it. However, it is meant to lure the image buyers by showing images that he already has seen giving him/her a second chance.
Denis

So question is how many people use 'stock' or 'image' and how many of these are our buyers?

A lot. What you are identifying is the long tail of Search. These searches are typically 5+ words, and they contain "stock images" or "stock photos" or "royalty-free" etc. Trying to rank #1 for "stock images" is darn near impossible. But it is possible to rank #1 for "cascoly india stock images", assuming the quotes are a broad match and not exact. The idea is to rank #1 for as many long tail searches as possible.