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

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.

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

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.

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on May 25, 2014, 20:26

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.

Quote from: klsbear on May 25, 2014, 23:22

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.