MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Shutterstock.com => Topic started by: hairybiker777 on May 25, 2014, 17:35
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G'day folks,
I've just been accepted at SS and am starting to send them my images, which have been tagged for IS ("medium group of animals", "elementary age children" etc) because IS has been my main agency till now. Does that tagging style go OK on SS, or is it better to re-work everything for SS? I'm reading tips/blogs etc on the SS site, but am also keen to get some advice from the trenches...
TIA
Nick
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You will need to use the sort of language people speak, IMO, versus the artificial language of Getty/iStock CV. If you do searches on Shutterstock with Getty CV terms you will get some results, but you'll get many more if you use the terms you'd use with Google or any other "plain english" search engine.
I was independent, then IS exclusive, then indie again (since June 2011). For the most part things were OK but there was a point when I was keywording with CV terms and it was a major pain to undo that. Focus on your best sellers to start if you have a large portfolio and need to minimize the work
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Yeah, I don't use any of that silly wording any more. It's not a 'group of people', it's a 'crowd'. And so on.
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I can't even remotely imagine anybody searching for "medium group of animals."
Getty expects that kind of cr*p? Really???
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A medium group of people lives in a residential structure which has a formal garden in the front or back yard...
It works - sort of - when you search on Getty sites because they translate english into CV (or French or German or...)
The problems are that you can't be nimble about adding new things, you can't easily incorporate local or specialized terms - it's a centrally managed system. There were always problems with terms you wanted to add that you couldn't because they weren't in the CV (and no sane buyer will search for those terms in quotations which is the only way to find non-CV terms, at least when the search code isn't broken).
It is a relic of another era (pre-Google) and it attempted to solve translation and ambiguity - does black mean the color of something or the ethnicity of a person; is lavender a color or a plant. Everything is hierarchical - specific terms exist within broader ones. If only the world and the English language were as ordered and simple (limited) as the CV :)
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I can't even remotely imagine anybody searching for "medium group of animals."
Getty expects that kind of cr*p? Really???
You don't keyword or search on that.
If you put e.g. 'some/many' you can refine that to 'small/medium/large' group of 'people/animals/objects'.
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It is a relic of another era (pre-Google) and it attempted to solve translation and ambiguity - does black mean the color of something or the ethnicity of a person; is lavender a color or a plant. Everything is hierarchical - specific terms exist within broader ones. If only the world and the English language were as ordered and simple (limited) as the CV :)
And it's why, for example, if you search for Blue Whale by best match on iStock, the top results are actually blue whales, not just any sort of whale or whale shark swimming in blue sea, as with e.g. SS, Alamy or Stocksy. ("Blue Whale" works on Stocksy and to some extent on Alamy, but not on SS). Other phrases likewise, of course.
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The problems are that you can't be nimble about adding new things, you can't easily incorporate local or specialized terms - it's a centrally managed system. There were always problems with terms you wanted to add that you couldn't because they weren't in the CV (and no sane buyer will search for those terms in quotations which is the only way to find non-CV terms, at least when the search code isn't broken).
I don't know why a proportion of sane buyers wouldn't put phrases into quotes like I do on Google if I don't get a good result on searches.
However, they are showing no interest in fixing the long-standing bug which just nixes keyword phrases which aren't in the CV, rather than allowing them 'for your own use' and allowing buyers to find them in quotations, if only in the language you uploaded them in.
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It is a relic of another era (pre-Google) and it attempted to solve translation and ambiguity - does black mean the color of something or the ethnicity of a person; is lavender a color or a plant. Everything is hierarchical - specific terms exist within broader ones. If only the world and the English language were as ordered and simple (limited) as the CV :)
And it's why, for example, if you search for Blue Whale by best match on iStock, the top results are actually blue whales, not just any sort of whale or whale shark swimming in blue sea, as with e.g. SS, Alamy or Stocksy. ("Blue Whale" works on Stocksy and to some extent on Alamy, but not on SS). Other phrases likewise, of course.
But how do you handle something like Shrimp Cocktail which works if the buyer searches for the phrase, or if they search for shrimp if you've used that as a keyword too, but if the buyer searches on shrimp, then narrows the search by adding cocktail your shrimp cocktail won't show up unless you've also included cocktail as a keyword. But that could be considered keyword spam if you're image now shows up under a search for cocktails meaning beverages. If the search only takes phrases in the CV or individual words instead of pulling words from phrases you have to add the singe words or risk being missed in searches.
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But how do you handle something like Shrimp Cocktail which works if the buyer searches for the phrase, or if they search for shrimp if you've used that as a keyword too, but if the buyer searches on shrimp, then narrows the search by adding cocktail your shrimp cocktail won't show up unless you've also included cocktail as a keyword. But that could be considered keyword spam if you're image now shows up under a search for cocktails meaning beverages. If the search only takes phrases in the CV or individual words instead of pulling words from phrases you have to add the singe words or risk being missed in searches.
How many buyers would search for shrimp, without cocktail, if they are looking for images of a shrimp cocktail?
IMO, I'd prefer clean keywording that would have files containing the phrase "shrimp cocktail" (and "shrimp", of course), but not "cocktail". (This is for the IS / CV case, not for the OP's question of general keywording.)
The idea of a controlled vocabulary was a good one, IMO, but extremely difficult to implement and maintain. It requires diligence from contributors to know and follow it, an obvious, easy interface so buyers can use it without being confused, and a team constantly adding to and refining it. Even with all of that, I don't think perfection would be possible (that's unattainable), but it could be a lot better than the current, buggy mess.
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But how do you handle something like Shrimp Cocktail which works if the buyer searches for the phrase, or if they search for shrimp if you've used that as a keyword too, but if the buyer searches on shrimp, then narrows the search by adding cocktail your shrimp cocktail won't show up unless you've also included cocktail as a keyword. But that could be considered keyword spam if you're image now shows up under a search for cocktails meaning beverages. If the search only takes phrases in the CV or individual words instead of pulling words from phrases you have to add the singe words or risk being missed in searches.
How many buyers would search for shrimp, without cocktail, if they are looking for images of a shrimp cocktail?
IMO, I'd prefer clean keywording that would have files containing the phrase "shrimp cocktail" (and "shrimp", of course), but not "cocktail". (This is for the IS / CV case, not for the OP's question of general keywording.)
The idea of a controlled vocabulary was a good one, IMO, but extremely difficult to implement and maintain. It requires diligence from contributors to know and follow it, an obvious, easy interface so buyers can use it without being confused, and a team constantly adding to and refining it. Even with all of that, I don't think perfection would be possible (that's unattainable), but it could be a lot better than the current, buggy mess.
Me too but sites like Dreamstime take compound keywords and break them into individual keywords. Some sites like SS do allow compound keywords so I just use them and let DT break them apart.