I'd love reply ONLY from the members that are in 2nd and 3rd payment "grade" (036 and 038$ per download).
 A few days ago i drank a beer with my good friend, and also one of the very best microstock photographers at the moment (don't believe everything that everybody says about himself ) - and he told me his observation: his (excellent) photos are not showing in the search when typing a few top keywords for his image when "newest" option is chosen. -you guess on example if the image number is 3......150 - in the search on some of the pages is 3.....180, and the next one is 3.... 140. - there is no 3...150 image in the search by newest option.
 His analyze of portfolios that are shown are there is a number of if i can say "not so experienced" contributors, -or contributors with small portfolios etc...(pointing->these contributors are in the 0.25/dl "grade").
 Concept that we've discussed about is one of top needed/searched/bayed  - "woman/beauty"
 I had a short trip these days, i had no internet in the mountains, but i'm now back, and this morning, i tried to find my latest (was only one image sent) image, and at this moment mine should be somewhere in the 13-15th side of "newest" with "woman, beauty" keywords - and mine photo is nowhere with newest search.the number is 38234959.
 i did a check again this moment - on the 13th page (when "photos only" is chosen also, and 10 rows view at the bottom) - the latest image is 38234212 - so this one is uploaded before mine, and the first one is 38235994 - so, that one is newest than mine.
 am i correct if i say that mine should be somewhere in between these two, and - this is not.

 - so, my concerns are - is this a site bug, or this is a common issue on ss?
 if i am correct, agency has an interest to sell images on the 0.25$ per download rather than 0.38, because a credit package is a total of dowlnoads for total of money -so there is a bigger part for the company left. (am i right about this?)

 so, i'd love to have some reply from the contributors that are in the bigger payment grades.

 if i am right about this, i would agree with selling my images also for 0.25, RATHER than for 0.36 (where i am at the moment) - and my images to be shown in the search, -because, these can be a 100$/dl, but if it is not in a most common search (best match - whee this is never going to be at the begining of its life on the site without downloads, and newest - where this is not showing) -this is very likely that this is not going to be bayed ever.

thanks dook. the reason why i ask a community here and not on the ss forum, is that i really need a feedback from the members, but from the other side - i am not a person who like to burn a fire. -if i have a few feedbacks here - i would than ask a ss support about this.
*i am not speaking about drops of sales volume, (i never ask other people how much they earn and these things) - i am only thinking about this glitch in a search.

yes - the more money we earn, -we have less of conspiracy theories.

BUT:

 there is stil NO my specific image in the search typing "newest" option. this is not a conspiracy theory, this is the fact. - there is no image. this might be that is going to appear in a time, but now, at this moment - there is no image (which is online).
 o.k. - image surely need some time to come into a search - but - how the images which are newer than mine are already in a search?

Perhaps there is a difference in the speed of reviewers?  Sometimes I get a review in 24 hours and other times it takes a few days.  I wonder if the faster review images appear higher in the search?  There are lots of conspiracy theories about the sites and most of them will be false, I still think a good image will sell and a bad one wont.

I agree with sharpshot - I don't think there is some sort of weighting against higher level contributors - the review time is the most likely answer for the search. Sometimes images just don't show up for a while - probably has to do with synchronising servers in different locations (ok yes I'm just making that up - but I'm sure there is a logical reason).

Having said that getting a good run of downloads early on can really boost an image's performance - sometimes you hit the stock lottery and get a mundane image that preforms remarkably well.

In terms of the "most popular" placing, I think established images and contributors have a distinct advantage - once an image is popular, it can be extremely hard to knock off the front pages.

Here is an example of how it could of happened.

I uploaded an image and it gets number 100 and get in the cue
you upload an image and it gets number 101
50 more people upload images, now the number 151
I upload another image that adds to my cue, now I have image 100 and 152 in the cue.

My images get reviewed and online, so image 100 and 152 are now online
Your image 101 has just been reviewed but the site hasn't been updated yet so it still isn't online.

extrapolate that amount to 10,000 images/ day or week or whatever crazy number the reviewers have to go through and you have very non-concurrent numbers.

I am at the .36 level and I just did a test of 4 photos that I just uploaded and got approved this week.

Three came up on the first page when sorted by newest first using one or two keywords I know were included. One photo was of snow peas in a bowl. When I search for snow AND peas AND bowl, nothing shows up. When I search for peas AND bowl, it shows up. Go figure. Maybe the search term snow seems irrelevant, therefore nothing shows up? Not sure why that happens. I don't imagine it will ever be possible to get a search engine that is perfect 100% of the time.

Cathy - Your image doesn't come up with 'snow' because it is not in the keywords. Maybe the reviewer removed it? I'm not familiar with the term 'snow pea' but in the UK I think those vegetables would be called 'mangetout' (as in French for 'eat all').

The sites are constantly monkeying with their search engine, not to mention the frequent search glitches.  I stopped doing sample searches for my image placement a couple of years ago. 

Only way I could retain what's left of my sanity

How true!