MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Shutterstock.com => Topic started by: Rose Tinted Glasses on February 15, 2016, 20:57
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What a joke this is. Some ignorant photographer/videographer spammed a clip with incorrect keywords. I hope they sue him and remove their total portfolio.
Moral of the story, bad keywords hurt us all.
How can a buyer purchase anything with confidence from any agency if there is not a standard in keywords???
http://www.buzzfeed.com/meganapper/opening-shot-in-rubios-morning-again-in-america-ad-appears-t#.dj8VDx9ZW (http://www.buzzfeed.com/meganapper/opening-shot-in-rubios-morning-again-in-america-ad-appears-t#.dj8VDx9ZW)
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Show me the non- specialist agencies with consistently high keywording standards.
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Wow this is real news and I'm totally stumped how agencies could allow this. Nobody has brought up this problem before. You mean we write our own keywords and some people would sink to lying or adding wrong words, just for 38 cents? I'm devastated that this is allowed.
2010 To me this seems like the perfect reason why keywords should be checked by reviewers when images are uploaded...on all sites. The image would be rejected, the submitter would have a chance to fix the keywords and re-upload, and the image wouldn't be in front of buyers, who will see that come up in a search for bible or religion and be annoyed, possibly going elsewhere.
Now Canada is in New York? Every desert is the Sahara or Death Valley. Why not. All water is the ocean. If microstockers can make some money by lying about the location, they will. Hasn't anybody here figured it out yet. Anything for peanuts, upload your whole collection to DP for 25c, sell out to place that pay 15%. It's the way of Micro.
Then complain on the forum how some are unethical and we are being used. When you sell your soul, your art, your work, to the devil, you don't get to re-write the contract. The devil holds the rights to your soul. You sold out.
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Show me the non- specialist agencies with consistently high keywording standards.
Pretty much all the micro agencies are filled with bad keywords. I could give several examples but the one I posted is real as opposed to getting into a pissing contest with the usual crowd here. I did that once many years ago with monkey and ape.
It's really simple, just keyword properly. If the image/clip is good and the buyer can use it, then it will most likely sell for what it is or for what it's not in this case.
The artist should be have all of their worked removed from SS as a lesson to us all. I also hope they sue SS and the artist. This is a blatant lie and willfully done. Tough love, but much needed.
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What a joke this is. Some ignorant photographer/videographer spammed a clip with incorrect keywords. I hope they sue him and remove their total portfolio.
Moral of the story, bad keywords hurt us all.
How can a buyer purchase anything with confidence from any agency if there is not a standard in keywords???
[url]http://www.buzzfeed.com/meganapper/opening-shot-in-rubios-morning-again-in-america-ad-appears-t#.dj8VDx9ZW[/url] ([url]http://www.buzzfeed.com/meganapper/opening-shot-in-rubios-morning-again-in-america-ad-appears-t#.dj8VDx9ZW[/url])
Probably keywords were suggested by SS tool ;)
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Show me the non- specialist agencies with consistently high keywording standards.
Pretty much all the micro agencies are filled with bad keywords. I could give several examples but the one I posted is real as opposed to getting into a pissing contest with the usual crowd here. I did that once many years ago with monkey and ape.
It's really simple, just keyword properly. If the image/clip is good and the buyer can use it, then it will most likely sell for what it is or for what it's not in this case.
The artist should be have all of their worked removed from SS as a lesson to us all. I also hope they sue SS and the artist. This is a blatant lie and willfully done. Tough love, but much needed.
So why you are so piss off about this clip.
Author of this clip is obviously on crappy cruise ship trip maybe with family and visit 100 places on this naive weekly voyage. Who knows if he take this clip, maybe his wife, son, daughter whatever, and they are maybe not even from USA.
I see it since my first day at microstock.
I dont defend author but you are surely not one who will kick his ass out of stock (dont be Chad if you are not).
And why any wannabe politicians (or they PR or marketing stuff) are buying clips from B-role stock sites?!?
Because they are all ignorant liars.
And circle is closed
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Not defending this but some agencies sometimes the name of an item is accurate but agencies like Dreamtime do not allow more than one word as a keyword. Fortunately, if an animal is called something like Canada Goose then it might be in Canada or US. Same thing with food or other names.
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Not defending this but some agencies sometimes the name of an item is accurate but agencies like Dreamtime do not allow more than one word as a keyword. Fortunately, if an animal is called something like Canada Goose then it might be in Canada or US. Same thing with food or other names.
I am not defending this either. I don't know of one agency that can confuse the keywords "San Francisco" "New York" "Vancouver".
Seriously, how do you unintentionally keyword a major city on the west coast of Canada and confuse it with two major cities on opposite coasts in the good ole USofA???
To keyword like this took effort and it was intentional effort.
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Background is Vancouver, the boat is going from SF to NY. Very accurate keywording :P ;D
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Vancouver is in America.
America begins on the Bering Strait (or Greenland?) and end on Cape Horn…
If the movie speaks about the USA the text should say "It’s morning again in the United States of America"
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Show me the non- specialist agencies with consistently high keywording standards.
Pretty much all the micro agencies are filled with bad keywords. I could give several examples but the one I posted is real as opposed to getting into a pissing contest with the usual crowd here. I did that once many years ago with monkey and ape.
It's really simple, just keyword properly. If the image/clip is good and the buyer can use it, then it will most likely sell for what it is or for what it's not in this case.
The artist should be have all of their worked removed from SS as a lesson to us all. I also hope they sue SS and the artist. This is a blatant lie and willfully done. Tough love, but much needed.
Monkey and ape rips my knitting too, but apparently (?) there isn't a distinction in Italian. ::)
But it's not only spamming that causes search problems. It can be the way searches are done. E.g. on SS and several others, searching Blue Whale returns any picture with whale, including 'whale shark' and 'blue' (usually referring to the water, maybe the sky).
Only last week I searched the 'smug' agency for Scottish wildlife, and got lots of photos of pics from Edinburgh zoo, which isn't what someone searching Scottish wildlife would want to see.
You didn't answer my question. I'm as anti-spam as anyone, and I'd be really interested in an agency which took keywording seriously. However, without a CV, which many here seem to dislike intensely, I don't see how the 'Blue whale' type of errors (that's just my personal test, but it applies to any 'phrase' keyword you like) can be eliminated. A CV for a generalist company is an enormous task to maintain and update.
Then there's the 'what if the buyers are ignorant' argument, e.g. for putting reptile and amphibian for one animal. It's not something I do because of vanity, probably, but there seems to be some evidence of sales supporting that argument, (also e.g. maybe not everyone knows the difference between a monkey and an ape - then there are Barbary 'Apes', which are macaques ...)
Still, if SS banned that spammer, they'd have to ban all the rest to be fair. That would certainly cut down their library. ;D
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Show me the non- specialist agencies with consistently high keywording standards.
Pretty much all the micro agencies are filled with bad keywords. I could give several examples but the one I posted is real as opposed to getting into a pissing contest with the usual crowd here. I did that once many years ago with monkey and ape.
It's really simple, just keyword properly. If the image/clip is good and the buyer can use it, then it will most likely sell for what it is or for what it's not in this case.
The artist should be have all of their worked removed from SS as a lesson to us all. I also hope they sue SS and the artist. This is a blatant lie and willfully done. Tough love, but much needed.
Monkey and ape rips my knitting too, but apparently (?) there isn't a distinction in Italian. ::)
But it's not only spamming that causes search problems. It can be the way searches are done. E.g. on SS and several others, searching Blue Whale returns any picture with whale, including 'whale shark' and 'blue' (usually referring to the water, maybe the sky).
Only last week I searched the 'smug' agency for Scottish wildlife, and got lots of photos of pics from Edinburgh zoo, which isn't what someone searching Scottish wildlife would want to see.
You didn't answer my question. I'm as anti-spam as anyone, and I'd be really interested in an agency which took keywording seriously. However, without a CV, which many here seem to dislike intensely, I don't see how the 'Blue whale' type of errors (that's just my personal test, but it applies to any 'phrase' keyword you like) can be eliminated. A CV for a generalist company is an enormous task to maintain and update.
Then there's the 'what if the buyers are ignorant' argument, e.g. for putting reptile and amphibian for one animal. It's not something I do because of vanity, probably, but there seems to be some evidence of sales supporting that argument, (also e.g. maybe not everyone knows the difference between a monkey and an ape - then there are Barbary 'Apes', which are macaques ...)
Still, if SS banned that spammer, they'd have to ban all the rest to be fair. That would certainly cut down their library. ;D
Might as well add any port city in the USA and Canada then.
Vancouver is Vancouver. It's not Seattle, It's not San Francisco, and it sure as he!! is not New York. This is blatant spam. I am surprised this idiot did not even add Boston or Chicago or Halifax or even Montreal to the mix as well.
With the media coverage this has been getting, I think it safe to assume SS has lost a customer or two from this. It's a credibility issue in my opinion.
As per your "blue whale" argument, yes CV is a good thing. But there is no "San", "Francisco", "New", "York" in "Vancouver".
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Ha ha ha ha! Obviously a New Yorker didn't edit this video. But you'd think with all the iconic landmarks in NY, this editor would have looked for footage of the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building... where he perhaps could see Shutterstock employees waving hello from the ping pong room.
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As per your "blue whale" argument, yes CV is a good thing. But there is no "San", "Francisco", "New", "York" in "Vancouver".
I said that not only spam was the problem. I totally hate spam, and have a long history of posting about same. Multiple locations are rife over most agencies.
In some agencies, New York pics show up in searches for York, so you have to search York, England. That's easy enough once a buyer knows they need to do that, because almost everyone has heard of New York, so they might understand; however, for example, not everyone knows there are other Scotlands apart from Scotland, UK, e.g. apparently in Texas, which I didn't know until I suddenly had to start DAing Scotland on iS, so might be perplexed or misled.
So, do you think SS will pay you (or anyone) to go over their collection highlighting spammers to be banned? I'm sure a week of finding/reporting spammers would undermine our will to live, but worse, I don't think there's an appetite for clean keywording on the agencies.
There have been many such 'outs' of stock files (either sloppy keywording or sloppy search results or sloppy use by buyers [e.g. who couldn't find 'exactly' what they needed and satisficed, but were caught out by sharp eyed viewers]), but it doesn't seem to make much difference to sales after the storm in the teacup has calmed.
Like I already said, where would be budget buyer go to get a clean search, both from spamming and the search algorithm?
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I find it hard to get too annoyed about this. It is for the agencies to worry about. We pay them enough, they can sort it out.
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I really hate the spammers and wish something could be done but the problem is rampant. I assume their thinking is to have their images/clips show up in as many searches as possible hoping that they will get some downloads even though their work is not relevant to the search, but that really makes it difficult for buyers. For editorial the agencies should take a very strict approach but for RF nothing will happen unless agencies decide it is important. A cv to me is like communism - nice idea in theory but in practice it just doesn't work, as shown thoroughly by the almost complete failure of the iS cv. DT used to have a system where buyers could report inappropriate keywords but that never worked very well either - I was reported once for the keyword "Australia" on an image of a fish taken at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Easily dealt with obviously but for the agencies a system that could take a lot of time for little benefit. Giving reviewers authority to reject for keywords - which I think they have already at SS and probably other agencies - also may be a problem if they are not aware of all possible descriptors or with the blue whale example given previously. Something will only happen if buyers complain vociferously and it doesn't look like that will be anytime soon. Caveat emptor!
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I really hate the spammers and wish something could be done ...
It wouldn't be all that hard to develop software that would flag the most egregious cases, especially where location information is involved. Start by flagging any image keyworded with multiple countries or multiple cities.
A human reviewer could then see if there was an obvious explanation (an image of multiple isolated old fashioned luggage stickers for example). If not, it gets rejected for keywords and submission software allows for correction of keywords without uploading the image again. You keep detailed stats on each contributor's track record regarding keywords so you can identify serial offenders.
I did a search on SS for hawaii caribbean and there were over 18,000 results! Taking just a few of the page one offenders, you can find one image that says it's in "caribbean, hawaii, cancun, thailand, mexico, maldives, barbados". Putting tropical onto a beach with a palm tree is fine, but larding on every country you can think of that has nice beaches is spam.
A search for city street produces over 1.3million results and from the first page there's an image that claims to be in "amsterdam, rome, belgium, netherlands, bremen, france, italy, paris, germany"
I found (doing a search for iowa maine) an image of a bend in a river with the following keywords: "louisiana, shore, jersey, sunset, alaska, iowa, minnesota, river, north, nevada, arizona, sunrise, new, canada, colorado, carolina, mississippi, kansas, washington, york, kentucky, delaware, oklahoma, nebraska, massachusetts, michigan, oregon, maryland, montana, arkansas, wisconsin, california, vancouver, indiana, hampshire, ohio, alberta, mexico, georgia, idaho, bc, maine, alabama, pennsylvania, connecticut, missouri, illinois, hawaii, florida, seattle"
SS clearly doesn't want to spend a cent on fixing this problem, or even making it mostly better. They've provided a tool to help contributors find keywords (not a bad thing if you pay attention to the problem of wrong keywords). You don't need a CV (whose time has come and gone IMO), but you need good search and some rudimentary anti-spam measures in image acceptance.
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Vancouver is in America.
America begins on the Bering Strait (or Greenland?) and end on Cape Horn…
If the movie speaks about the USA the text should say "It’s morning again in the United States of America"
^this
Technically the video is correct. People just like to whine.
If there is a problem here it is that the editor of the video was ignorant enough about the cities of the US that he/she couldn't tell that this wasn't one of them.
If I want to purchase a picture of an Asian woman talking on a cell phone and the search shows women of all sorts of races and I pick the wrong one it isn't totally the keyword spammers fault. Buyers need a brain too.
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Agencies don't care and it's too hard to go back and check 50 million images, video and drawings. They should have done this right from the start. Now we are all penalized for the problem, buyers can't trust the keywords or make a good search.
It makes us look stupid and casts a shadow on all of Micro work as cheap amateurs fighting for more peanuts by any way.
I use only real and good keywords. I resent people who intentionally or accidentally don't know San Fran from Vancouver. Buyers can't find good search for images because the spammers and idiots have plugged the system. This is the way of Micro more words, words that aren't main subject, words that people imagine, anything to get more views. Grasping for any chance to make a few more pennies.
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Agencies don't care and it's too hard to go back and check 50 million images, video and drawings. They should have done this right from the start. Now we are all penalized for the problem, buyers can't trust the keywords or make a good search.
It makes us look stupid and casts a shadow on all of Micro work as cheap amateurs fighting for more peanuts by any way.
I use only real and good keywords. I resent people who intentionally or accidentally don't know San Fran from Vancouver. Buyers can't find good search for images because the spammers and idiots have plugged the system. This is the way of Micro more words, words that aren't main subject, words that people imagine, anything to get more views. Grasping for any chance to make a few more pennies.
I'm quite happy for these folks to spam their images It makes buying from Microstock companies unreliable for clients that require accuracy. Therefor they continue to buy from the specialist (often RM) agencies where prices are much higher.
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Vancouver is in America.
America begins on the Bering Strait (or Greenland?) and end on Cape Horn…
If the movie speaks about the USA the text should say "It’s morning again in the United States of America"
^this
Technically the video is correct. People just like to whine.
If there is a problem here it is that the editor of the video was ignorant enough about the cities of the US that he/she couldn't tell that this wasn't one of them.
If I want to purchase a picture of an Asian woman talking oa cell phone and the search shows women of all sorts of races and I pick the wrong one it isn't totally the keyword spammers fault. Buyers need a brain too.
That's just silly. not the Asian woman example, but for sure, you can't expect all potential users of stock to be able to identify all cities of the US at sight. H*ll, I bet even a lot of USians can't do that, far less those of us who live elsewhere.
With other goods you buy, you expect them to be 'as described'*, and I'm pretty sure that legally the disclaimers the sites make that they make no guarantee that the files are as described would hold them free of blame - you can't make disclaimers to let you circumvent the Law.
*You don't buy something which says it's a tin of peas and expect to find pears inside the tin instead.
(And yes, my first thought in the current instance was 'Isn't Canada part of America?')
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Vancouver is in America.
America begins on the Bering Strait (or Greenland?) and end on Cape Horn…
If the movie speaks about the USA the text should say "It’s morning again in the United States of America"
^this
Technically the video is correct. People just like to whine.
If there is a problem here it is that the editor of the video was ignorant enough about the cities of the US that he/she couldn't tell that this wasn't one of them.
If I want to purchase a picture of an Asian woman talking oa cell phone and the search shows women of all sorts of races and I pick the wrong one it isn't totally the keyword spammers fault. Buyers need a brain too.
That's just silly. not the Asian woman example, but for sure, you can't expect all potential users of stock to be able to identify all cities of the US at sight. H*ll, I bet even a lot of USians can't do that, far less those of us who live elsewhere.
With other goods you buy, you expect them to be 'as described'*, and I'm pretty sure that legally the disclaimers the sites make that they make no guarantee that the files are as described would hold them free of blame - you can't make disclaimers to let you circumvent the Law.
*You don't buy something which says it's a tin of peas and expect to find pears inside the tin instead.
(And yes, my first thought in the current instance was 'Isn't Canada part of America?')
I'm not trying to suggest that keywording spam isn't a problem. Just that there is a responsibility on the buyer's side as well.
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Agencies don't care and it's too hard to go back and check 50 million images, video and drawings. They should have done this right from the start. Now we are all penalized for the problem, buyers can't trust the keywords or make a good search.
It makes us look stupid and casts a shadow on all of Micro work as cheap amateurs fighting for more peanuts by any way.
I use only real and good keywords. I resent people who intentionally or accidentally don't know San Fran from Vancouver. Buyers can't find good search for images because the spammers and idiots have plugged the system. This is the way of Micro more words, words that aren't main subject, words that people imagine, anything to get more views. Grasping for any chance to make a few more pennies.
I'm quite happy for these folks to spam their images It makes buying from Microstock companies unreliable for clients that require accuracy. Therefor they continue to buy from the specialist (often RM) agencies where prices are much higher.
+ Makes mine rise in the search for being accurate words. I don't like being included with the people who make us look bad, but I don't mind when it hurts their sales. By now people here should see that good words help your search placement and spam makes your pictures drop. Alamy explains that, clicks, views, zooms, sales. Raises search.
Words search on Micro, no view, no zoom or preview, no sale, you lose rank.
Then people here blame the agency for their falling search page change which is designed for giving buyers better results. Spam penality paid.
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Vancouver is in America.
America begins on the Bering Strait (or Greenland?) and end on Cape Horn…
If the movie speaks about the USA the text should say "It’s morning again in the United States of America"
^this
Technically the video is correct. People just like to whine.
If there is a problem here it is that the editor of the video was ignorant enough about the cities of the US that he/she couldn't tell that this wasn't one of them.
If I want to purchase a picture of an Asian woman talking oa cell phone and the search shows women of all sorts of races and I pick the wrong one it isn't totally the keyword spammers fault. Buyers need a brain too.
That's just silly. not the Asian woman example, but for sure, you can't expect all potential users of stock to be able to identify all cities of the US at sight. H*ll, I bet even a lot of USians can't do that, far less those of us who live elsewhere.
With other goods you buy, you expect them to be 'as described'*, and I'm pretty sure that legally the disclaimers the sites make that they make no guarantee that the files are as described would hold them free of blame - you can't make disclaimers to let you circumvent the Law.
*You don't buy something which says it's a tin of peas and expect to find pears inside the tin instead.
(And yes, my first thought in the current instance was 'Isn't Canada part of America?')
Saying Canada is part of America is sort of like saying isn't Scotland part of England. I can call a Scotsman an Englishman and he wouldn't get upset about that.
Both countries are part of the North American continent but that's as far as that goes.
Having said that, the guy who edited the ad was likely on a deadline and trusted that when he did a search the results were what he expected them to be and no further fact checking was needed. Which is how it should be.
Adding specific city names when they are wrong is misleading and a bad practice and the contributor should be penalized for doing it.
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By now people here should see that good words help your search placement and spam makes your pictures drop. Alamy explains that, clicks, views, zooms, sales. Raises search
Alamy's rank is by contributor, not by individual file. Also contrary to what they say, words anywhere in the title, caption or keywords all affect search, so searches are by no means always clean. For example, search Leonards Cohen Doesn't matter if you don't have a clue what he looks like - it will be perfectly obvious that many of the top ranking pics aren't him. Yet further down the search are plenty which are him. Actually in this case few if the badly placed files are spammed , it's the way the search is pulling words from different fields combined with the rank of the contributor. Which must be annoying for buyers and lower ranked togs with truly relevant pics.
But there is a lot of egregious spamming by Alamy contributors, so don't imagine it's the domain only of microstockers. I've seen pretty shocking keywording by direct uploaders to Getty too.
It just seems to be totally endemic. Why the buyers don't complain a lot more is a mystery.
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By now people here should see that good words help your search placement and spam makes your pictures drop. Alamy explains that, clicks, views, zooms, sales. Raises search
Alamy's rank is by contributor, not by individual file. Also contrary to what they say, words anywhere in the title, caption or keywords all affect search, so searches are by no means always clean. For example, search Leonards Cohen Doesn't matter if you don't have a clue what he looks like - it will be perfectly obvious that many of the top ranking pics aren't him. Yet further down the search are plenty which are him. Actually in this case few if the badly placed files are spammed , it's the way the search is pulling words from different fields combined with the rank of the contributor. Which must be annoying for buyers and lower ranked togs with truly relevant pics.
But there is a lot of egregious spamming by Alamy contributors, so don't imagine it's the domain only of microstockers. I've seen pretty shocking keywording by direct uploaders to Getty too.
It just seems to be totally endemic. Why the buyers don't complain a lot more is a mystery.
All the major micro agencies monitor keywords used to buy photos. Stop with your always looking at the negative and exceptions. If a word is searched and the photo sells, that gives a boost. If a word doesn't match, doesn't get a click or view, it adds nothing, takes away nothing, that's just relative. Positive advances for more postive results, places the photo higher in the search by many reasons.
We aren't harmed by negative results in a search as much as rewarded for positive results. Your name or leonard cohn doesn't lower rank or serach. Like here, search can only give + for search.
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^^ You believe what they tell us, and I'll believe the results I find. I assure you that the examples I give are by no means exceptions.
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^^ You believe what they tell us, and I'll believe the results I find. I assure you that the examples I give are by no means exceptions.
I see THEY and the truth. What are the results you find? Show me proof
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^^ You believe what they tell us, and I'll believe the results I find. I assure you that the examples I give are by no means exceptions.
I see THEY and the truth. What are the results you find? Show me proof
That's not what I said. I said we each have different beliefs. Probably neither of us has the whole story, and it will be different between agencies.
I have already given clear examples from Shutterstock-com and Alamy. You can do any number of similar searches in both agencies and find the same sort of results. Also on Alamy any photo of Joe Bloggs and Jane Doe ( assuming each name is somewhere in the title, caption or keywords ) will also appear in a search for John Doe or Janet Bloggs, higher or lower in the search according to the AR of the contributor.
Alamy is totally open that Alamy Rank is per contributor, not per individual file. That's why they encourage pseudonym use.
iS keeps telling us that their system is as you described above. However, the minute a file is accepted, before it's searchable, the keywords are rearranged, slightly in 'classic' view, radically and inexplicably in new view, where specifics are pushed down in favour of much more general kws.
In iS in particular, for years people were reporting that a buy on one particular keyword was a negative on the other keywords. For too long, like you, I didn't believe it, but I have two files which are high in best match for a more generic term and very low for the most obvious keyword. I'm not doing to show the files, but in keywording hierarchy it's like being high for 'furniture' but very low for sofa. (These are not the words).
However like I said, I'll believe on my evidence, you are free to come to your own conclusions based on naive optimism.
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DM shows iStock order for keywords. They don't hide anything from us. The words are in IS order, not our order. Is that some kind of naive optimism? Or do you just not undertsnad the facts in your negative world.
Every search on every site finds the words that we entered, when a buyer searches them, it finds the words they looked for. Your beloved IS, where you are exclusive, doesn't recognize a name it gets marked with a star as a not word, but if you have John Smith in the words, would you like IS to not find John and Smith? What should it find in your world? Some other words?
You keep using Alamy as the example because they are the only that ranks partly by contributor rank. The rest don't. Alamy also ranks search by relevance and diversity. Do you pay attention to that? All agencies use views, preview, search words, and a big many other things to make a match. It's not just about your words.
Because the agencies don't tell you how they do everything, you can't just make up your guess and claim it's intelligence. It's just a guess. When I ask for proof you answer, not naive optimism. Maybe not but it's not some imaginative conspiracy based on no facts or logic.
Many of my photos show on page 1 of SS search out of thousands of matches. Might be because they have good clean keywords or because I use words that have a good relation to word searches. But you complain and you aren't with SS. You should lean how IS works.
Correct precise keywords are important, there's nothing to agency tricks against us about that.
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DM shows iStock order for keywords. They don't hide anything from us. The words are in IS order, not our order. Is that some kind of naive optimism? Or do you just not undertsnad the facts in your negative world.
I only go by the evidence I see, not by people telling me how they think, or have been told, that the system works.
DM shows MY order for keywords, not iStock's.
My most recent file, no sales The views it has are directly from my 'look at this' link, not via a keyword search:
(http://www.lizworld.com/KWs2.jpg)
Top, the order I uploaded in (directly, not via DM)
Next down: the order DM has the keywords in, which is the same as my original order.
Next down: the order in the Classic view, a bit changed.
Last: The order in the New view: totally different from the order I uploaded in, and was like that as soon as it was accepted, before it had any views.
Particularly, notice how the main keyword (the species name) has sunk right down to insignificance in the New View. Yet if I was only allowed one keyword, that would be the one.
Also know that although it says 'sort by iStock order', that isn't what it means. QED.
BTW, being exclusive at iS doesn't mean it's beloved to me, I can't imagine where you got that idea; it means that it was the best of a bad lot, inasmuch as back then, they didn't have subs. Though of course, back in the day, it wasn't that bad (IMO).
I totally don't understand your John Smith/iS example. If you want any keyword phrase to show up, you need to ask them to add it to the CV, otherwise it won't show up, ever since some bug was introduced (Previously they could be searched in quotes, if the buyer knew to do that, and old keyword phrases not in the CV can still be searched that way, but not new single words or 'keyword phrases' on files added since over a year ago, you need to ask for it to be added.) The words which are old 'added for your own use' files, and are searchable in one language only, not translated, by using quotes are blue in Deep Meta and have a tickbox. The ones which are blue with no tickbox can't be searched at all.
I wouldn't normally keyword John and Smith separately, as it messes up search far too much, though obviously thereby I'm missing sales to people wanting to write articles about Johns or Smiths. Occasionally, I might have to do similar, if they decide not to add 'John Smith' or whatever to the CV. On other occasions, if the individual words aren't in the CV either, not adding the main keyword/keyword phrase might be an indication that there's little if any point having the image on iS, as the only possibility of a sale would be from secondary keywords (if the 'John Smith' not in the cv was the most important kw).
I don't see Alamy having a sort by diversity; what I see is searches by New, Creative and Relevant. Relevant is much better than it was a year or two ago, for sure (since they took location and contributer name out of the keyword search, for example), but still as the example I gave shows, it doesn't always show the most relevant files most highly. I can still see 'bizarre' searches coming up in my Measures which are a combination of words from different keyword sections.
All the factors, zooms, sales etc affect Alamy Rank, which is per contributor/pseudo. BHZ shows the effect. Otherwise, what would the point of pseudos be?
'Creative' I have no idea about. I have a series where some are Creative and most are not, yet it's an editorial series with no difference in the way they were shot. whether they have sold or been zoomed or not doesn't seem to be influencing creative.
I have advocated clean keywording on here from the very beginning. But what the agencies do with keywords ... :(
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I'm quite happy for these folks to spam their images It makes buying from Microstock companies unreliable for clients that require accuracy. Therefor they continue to buy from the specialist (often RM) agencies where prices are much higher.
What would make a buyer trust a RM agency more? In Alamy you keyword files after they are approved and there is plenty of space for spamming. Are the keywords checked afterwards?
PS Having multiple unrelated geographic locations for one image looks more cheating to me than spamming..
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I used to chuck in every keyword I could think of (pertinent of course) but now less so. I spent more time getting the description right because the agencies told me it drove traffic. I found keywords/phrases that nobody was using but which I thought were essential.
But - I have no idea AT ALL if any of these make a difference or not since sales dropped across the board in mid 2015.....so now I worry about the things I can change and leave everything else to the runes.
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I'm quite happy for these folks to spam their images It makes buying from Microstock companies unreliable for clients that require accuracy. Therefor they continue to buy from the specialist (often RM) agencies where prices are much higher.
What would make a buyer trust a RM agency more? In Alamy you keyword files after they are approved and there is plenty of space for spamming. Are the keywords checked afterwards?
PS Having multiple unrelated geographic locations for one image looks more cheating to me than spamming..
Alamy isn't a specialist agency.
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I'm quite happy for these folks to spam their images It makes buying from Microstock companies unreliable for clients that require accuracy. Therefor they continue to buy from the specialist (often RM) agencies where prices are much higher.
+1000000000000000000000000000000000000000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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By now people here should see that good words help your search placement and spam makes your pictures drop. Alamy explains that, clicks, views, zooms, sales. Raises search
Alamy's rank is by contributor, not by individual file. Also contrary to what they say, words anywhere in the title, caption or keywords all affect search, so searches are by no means always clean. For example, search Leonards Cohen Doesn't matter if you don't have a clue what he looks like - it will be perfectly obvious that many of the top ranking pics aren't him. Yet further down the search are plenty which are him. Actually in this case few if the badly placed files are spammed , it's the way the search is pulling words from different fields combined with the rank of the contributor. Which must be annoying for buyers and lower ranked togs with truly relevant pics.
But there is a lot of egregious spamming by Alamy contributors, so don't imagine it's the domain only of microstockers. I've seen pretty shocking keywording by direct uploaders to Getty too.
It just seems to be totally endemic. Why the buyers don't complain a lot more is a mystery.
Remember when description was searched and people would add a short book. New Alamy 1 keyword box, 10 weighted will solve most except the spam people.
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theres spamming in every agency, micro, macro, rf, rm you name it, why is he upset about spamming at shutter when he is not even part of it?
the buyer doesnt notice that the background is canada and not the states, cant blame the photographer for that stupidity.
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theres spamming in every agency, micro, macro, rf, rm you name it, why is he upset about spamming at shutter when he is not even part of it?
the buyer doesnt notice that the background is canada and not the states, cant blame the photographer for that stupidity.
Perhaps you miss the point... regardless of where you submit your work, bad keywords affect us all, and accuracy in keywords benefits us all. This is a fact regardless if you are RM, RF, Macro, Micro, etc.
I don't think the blame lies on the buyer at all. If I search for "monkey" and end up by purchasing and publishing a photo of an "ape" due to inaccurate keywords and being a buyer who sits in an office somewhere working for a magazine or whatever how am I to suddenly become a specialist in "primates"? Now if I were to search for "primates" as a buyer and published a "monkey" or an "ape" that would be accurate.
After all, who came out looking good with such inaccurate keywords? Accurate keywords don't make news headlines or retractions.
And yes it is totally the photographer's fault. How can one shot/clip of a harbor in Canada be several different harbors in two different countries as per the keywords used?
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well in that logic you cannot expect a photographer to be a specialist either,
i make an effort to correctly keyword my images, but i dont know if the bird in my photo is for example a larus or a kittiwake, i dont care, they look the same
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as for the city names, chichikov already touched on that
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i make an effort to correctly keyword my images, but i dont know if the bird in my photo is for example a larus or a kittiwake, i dont care, they look the same
::) :( Thereby starts the slippery slope:
Stage 2: One "doesn't care" about Terns or Fulmars either, as they "look the same" as Gulls on a superficial glimpse.
...
Stage 5: One thinks all rhinos "look the same", and "don't care", so you photoshop (badly) an extra horn onto a photo of an Indian/One-horned Rhinoceros and submit it to iStock titled, described and keyworded as a Black Rhino, including a description of the shape of the mouth, which clearly doesn't apply to your actual photo of a different species. (I just found that hoax on iS a couple of days ago, and haven't got over it yet.)
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i dont care
That is very reassuring for professional photo buyers and a great character reference.
:(
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as for the city names, chichikov already touched on that
Yes, a simple example, the transliteration of capital of Ukraine.
Киев (Kiev) in Russian
Київ (Kyiv) in Ukrainian
The official language in Ukraine is Ukrainian (even if everybody speaks also Russian there).
In October 2006, the United States federal government changed its official spelling of the city name to Kyiv, upon the recommendation of the US Board of Geographic Names. The British government has also started using Kyiv.
So why the Shutterstock system continues to accept Kiev and to reject Kyiv?
I don’t mean that Kiev should be rejected, because it is still very used, and honestly it is still the most used form all over the world, but Kyiv should not be considered as an error because it is the official orthography.
In my opinion both transliterations should be accepted.
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selective quoting to make a point, you should be in politics rtg, read my full comments and try to understand what i am saying
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as for the city names, chichikov already touched on that
Yes, a simple example, the transliteration of capital of Ukraine.
Киев (Kiev) in Russian
Київ (Kyiv) in Ukrainian
The official language in Ukraine is Ukrainian (even if everybody speaks also Russian there).
In October 2006, the United States federal government changed its official spelling of the city name to Kyiv, upon the recommendation of the US Board of Geographic Names. The British government has also started using Kyiv.
So why the Shutterstock system continues to accept Kiev and to reject Kyiv?
I don’t mean that Kiev should be rejected, because it is still very used, and honestly it is still the most used form all over the world, but Kyiv should not be considered as an error because it is the official orthography.
In my opinion both transliterations should be accepted.
I guess SS vocabulary is just not properly updated, it especially concerns the geo names. It gives me errors all the time, because it doesn't know half of the map, I ignore and submit as it is anyway..
In case of Kyiv though I would use both spellings in keywords since both could be used in searches (I actually spell as "Kiev" because I transliterate from Russian)
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selective quoting to make a point, you should be in politics rtg, read my full comments and try to understand what i am saying
???????????????????
What selective quoting??
I have quoted all your post.
And what is your rantings about politics??
What do you mean?
Edit: Sorry, just misunderstanding
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i wasnt replying to your comment
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i wasnt replying to your comment
Okay.
But generally when you answer to a comment without quoting it means that you answer to the previous comment, it is the use (netiquette) on forums ;)
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i wasnt replying to your comment
Okay.
But generally when you answer to a comment without quoting it means that you answer to the previous comment, it is the use (netiquette) on forums ;)
it was referred to "rtg" ;D
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netiquette also requires to read a comment properly and then you would have noticed it was addressed to someone else
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netiquette also requires to read a comment properly and then you would have noticed it was addressed to someone else
netiquette also requires to write a comment properly if you want to be understood.
Is rtg an english word????
I do not know any rtg
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netiquette also requires to read a comment properly and then you would have noticed it was addressed to someone else
netiquette also requires to write a comment properly if you want to be understood.
Is rtg an english word????
I do not know any rtg
hahahaha it's a lazy version of Rose Tinted Glasses - a member posting in this thread
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as for the city names, chichikov already touched on that
Yes, a simple example, the transliteration of capital of Ukraine.
Киев (Kiev) in Russian
Київ (Kyiv) in Ukrainian
The official language in Ukraine is Ukrainian (even if everybody speaks also Russian there).
In October 2006, the United States federal government changed its official spelling of the city name to Kyiv, upon the recommendation of the US Board of Geographic Names. The British government has also started using Kyiv.
So why the Shutterstock system continues to accept Kiev and to reject Kyiv?
I don’t mean that Kiev should be rejected, because it is still very used, and honestly it is still the most used form all over the world, but Kyiv should not be considered as an error because it is the official orthography.
In my opinion both transliterations should be accepted.
Never heard of Kyiv
Kiev it is for me and probably 99% of the English speaking world the other 1% are politically correct and don't count :D
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as for the city names, chichikov already touched on that
Yes, a simple example, the transliteration of capital of Ukraine.
Киев (Kiev) in Russian
Київ (Kyiv) in Ukrainian
The official language in Ukraine is Ukrainian (even if everybody speaks also Russian there).
In October 2006, the United States federal government changed its official spelling of the city name to Kyiv, upon the recommendation of the US Board of Geographic Names. The British government has also started using Kyiv.
So why the Shutterstock system continues to accept Kiev and to reject Kyiv?
I don’t mean that Kiev should be rejected, because it is still very used, and honestly it is still the most used form all over the world, but Kyiv should not be considered as an error because it is the official orthography.
In my opinion both transliterations should be accepted.
Never heard of Kyiv
Kiev it is for me and probably 99% of the English speaking world the other 1% are politically correct and don't count :D
Right. What will buyers search for. End of spelling lesson.