That's just how it is.......! Always now.

It depends on how you define "problems". Other sites break up phrases too. If the searcher uses all the words of the phrase in their search the image will show up. No one site has the best search algorithm and with all the keyword spam and so many images it is a wonder any images show up in their proper places. Although many will disagree, defining your image with fewer keywords is a good way to improve sales. It is very important to have the most relevant words in your list. Skip the fluff. When people have 50 keywords and only two match the buyer's search words, they will be further down the page than someone with 10 keywords of which two match. It's a matter of percentage, 2 out of 50 is 4%, 2 out of 10 is 20%. The system sees the 20% match as more relevant.

What everyone has to recognize is that a reviewer doesn't look at every image and then decide how it should be placed in any search. A system is in place that can only analyze data - words - no matter if they are in the title, description or list of keywords. Different fields of data are given more or less weight by different sites. Intelligent keyword search analysis is evolving but when there is a ton of data one word or phrase is weighed against the whole. The importance of each keyword is weighed differently against those rules and the result is supposed to help buyers (more buyers, more sales) by displaying the most relevant images first. For example, if a buyer searches for �onion� and photos of single onions are most often purchased when that search is made, more weight will be given to those images than the countless food shots of prepared dishes which also contain the word onion becausee it is an ingredient. So sales, matter in bringing an image to the top. That goes against the theory by some that new images sell better. I don't have an answer but it has to be remembered that machines, not people establish where an image shows up in any search. All data goes into a form (similar to a spreadsheet which is easier to understand if you are not a database expert) and then a set of rules is established to sort those words by order of importance. The meaning of "Importance" is tweeked by each site. Each site does it differently no matter if you enter a phrase or a series of words. The world of search technology is evolving but no matter the code behind the system the axiom �garbage in, garbage out� still applies. Too much garbage overloads the system and it's too late to go back.

how do you enter your keywords?

I do mine in lightroom and have always used 'multi words' or whatever you want to call them, and they've always survived the upload process into the SS content editor staying as "national park" or "evergreen tree" for example. I just checked.

maybe it's the program you are using. if the software automatically converts a space between words into a comma or semi-colon, that would probably be the source of the issue. Have you tried making quotations around your 'multi-words' in your software? That should fix the issue.

I use Lightroom also. In fact, on initial upload and when viewing in SS's "images to be submitted" the keywords aren't broken up, it is only upon actual submission that this happens.
I also do all my uploades via ftp.

ahh i see, right you are... just goes to show how much I look at my images after they've been accepted.