Shutterstock Photographer Forum :: View topic

HeatherL · Joined: 10 Dec 2004 Posts: 151 Location: Canada

For Jon and shutterstock...a contentious issue I know, but I'm posting some feedback here as a designer.

I was working on a project this week and I needed an image of sunglasses. So, typical of how I work on design projects, I went to a few stock sites and searched around. When I came to shutterstock, I typed "sunglasses" in the search field and got several pages...and the first 2 pages had quite a few images where NO sunglasses were in sight. (I just tried it again today and the first few pages now come up with more images with sunglasses in them...but keep going and you'll see what I mean.)

Because I've got some photos of my own here, and I want to support you guys, I kept searching--but I have to tell you...if it had been any other site I would have abandoned it pretty quickly. When I'm on a deadline, I have to use my time as efficiently as possible.

As a photog. I appreciate the fast approval times you offer, but as a designer, the lack of accuracy in keywords was pretty off-putting. I appreciate ALL the work you are doing to make this a great site, and I am not posting this as a complaint, but as feedback that I hope you can use. Maybe a balance can be found, somehow.

Best regards,
Heather

rodehi · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 5:02 pm

I could do that job(edit keywords).....Ron

southpaw · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 5:08 pm

This has always been an issue with me as well, not as a designer, but just using common sense tells me the search feature could be done better.
I have suggested in the past a much more detailed category selection could be utilized. There should be at least 2 levels of categorys. example: business as a main category and sub categories like, people,communication,computers,misc...etc. I also really like the idea of a conceptual category, so a person can categorize their picture by mood as well...But definately a revamp in how keywords are used should be an issue. Keywords that have nothing to do with the main focus of the photograph should not be allowed. Some people will argue here that the more the better, but that is great if you are looking for a specific photograph such as "picture of sunglasses on top of womans head", then you are likely to get pretty close matches if there are any. But just using the word "sunglasses" will get you every picture in the database that has the word sunglasses in it....

southpaw · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 5:11 pm

To add to my last post. I am probably one of the culprits with the sunglasses issue as I have used that word when describing a photo even tho they arent the focus. But because of the way the keywords are not limited or even watched too closely, I feel I have to do the same as everyone else to compete.....;-)

humnut · Joined: 17 Dec 2004 Posts: 43

if I am not mistaken the search results are ordered by default according to the upload date and not by relevancy and there is no way to change the order. Different options (by date,relevancy etc) like in the category pages would help to have better search results.

HeatherL · Joined: 10 Dec 2004 Posts: 151 Location: Canada

dwags · Joined: 04 Jan 2005 Posts: 49 Location: Ontario, Canada

I have similar concerns re keywords, and several days ago posted a comment about the accuracy.

Try looking up ROSE in a search and you'll find scores of photos that do not include a rose (flower). Many have objects that are rose coloured (glasses for one), but quite a few are in no way related to the flower or the colour.

In fact, I found several that did not even have the word ROSE in the list of keywords. The only reason I can see that these photos came up on my search is because rose is the past tense of rise which is in the keyword list - is this possible - and if so, why? I want a Rose, not sun that rose 5 minutes ago.

Yes, this area needs to be addressed to avoid frustrated customers.

Below is a list on nearly 200 words to describe a photo of a hand writing on a piece of paper (agian, no rose in the photo or in the list) How many of these words would you try to use if searching for a photo about writing?

academia, academic, academy, accuracy, accurate, achieve, achievement, active, analysis, answers, architect, architecture, assignment, ballpen, bar, book, bookcase, booklet, bookshop, bookstore, box, business, businessman, businesswoman, bussiness, chart, class, classics, classroom, clever, clip, clipboard, closeup, college, commerce, company, concepts, contract, coporate, corporate, corporation, covers, cultural, culture, curve, difficult, distance, distant, draft, drafted, drafting, draw, drawing, educate, education, educational, elegant, equipment, essay, exam, excellence, excellent, expensive, female, fingers, graduate, graduation, graph, graphic, graphing, grid, grow, growth, hand, handheld, handwriting, hard, height, high, historical, history, important, influence, information, instruct, intellectual, intelligence, intelligent, isolate, isolated, job, jot, jotting, journal, journaling, journalist, knowledge, lady, learn, learner, lecture, lecturer, length, letters, library, line, listen, literary, literature, loss, macro, male, man, manager, manuscripts, math, mathematics, measurable, measure, memorise, memorize, memory, money, nail, nailpolish, note, notebook, novels, numbers, office, old, open, organize, owl, page, paper, paperwork, pen, pencil, price, produce, production, profit, publications, pupil, read, readers, readings, real, reminder, rich, rise, room, rote, rule, ruler, sale, scale, scaled, scaling, school, science, scribble, secondary, sell, sepia, share, sign, size, sketch, sketching, smart, sophisticated, stack, stat, stationary, statistics, steel, stock, straight, student, study, studying, succeed, success, successful, suceed, sucess, sucessful, suit, take, teach, tend, tendancy, test, text, think, tone, tool, top, trade, trader, training, trend, trendy, tute, tutor, uni, university, up, upwards, used, value, vintage, wealth, wealthy, wise, woman, wood, wooden, word, works, write, writer

(Several spelling mistakes here also - several appear intentional - just in case the searcher is a poor speller??)

Dale

southpaw · Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005 5:41 pm

Jon
Why isnt something done about this obvious keyword spamming? When a reviewer is reviewing a photo are the keywords visible so they can see this? Surely with a list this large there should be SOME question as to the relevancy of them. I dont think the reveiwer should have to take the time to fix up someones keywords, but I still think some should be rejected for reasons like the list above. If its a good picture, ask them to use more relevent keywords and resubmit it. More is not necessarily better in some cases....
I feel the submitters that use a realistic amount of keywords that are relevant are getting penalized because they wont spam words and therefore a bunch of irrelevant photos come up in thier place...

StuartE · Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005 6:23 pm

I can see keyword spamming as an annoyance for the designers, but I don't know how people are penalised by the irrelevant images coming up - if I'm looking for a mountain goat wearing wellington boots, and the image has neither a goat, or the pretty yellow boots I need, how would I choose it because of it's keywords??

Likewise, if I'm just searching in general for wellington boots, and the image doesn't have any boots in it, how does that penalise the submitter who has an image of boots and a correct keyword?

Don't get me wrong, I think keyword 'spamming' - the art of using keywords that don't apply just to get your image into a list, is a problem - but more from the viewpoint of frustrated people seeing too many incorrect shots - still, if they use relatively precise keywords to search for, they'll get closer to what they want, too... I also think people should put as many correct, descriptive keywords as they can - I look a Dwags list, and think back to the last search I did - I was looking for a sad face - I started with a search for 'despondent' to see what I could find rather than looking at a thousand 'sad' images... despondent got me what I was after straight away...

Yes, I would miss some roses if I search for 'yellow rose petal bloom flower' - but if it got me what I was after, quickly, who has been penalised? The person with lots of correct keywords that apply to their image, or the person who only put a couple of keywords up? There is an argument for both patterns of keywords, but I can't say that people will be 'penalised' by having too many keywords, opposed to too few... different styles for different people, what we need to do is keep keywords accurate...

The problem, to my eyes, is how to do that... to have someone monitor all the keywords ultimately costs money - if a reviewer is checking keywords thoroughly, they're not checking images as quickly... if you ask people to do it, they'll need some sort of renumeration - or would you go through checking keywords for free?? Would you also add words that were missing, so the roses without 'rose' in their list can be found easily?

If you put 'sexy naked girl woman nude christmas beach' in the keywords for every one of your images, they'd get a lot of viewing - it might even generate a few downloads, just from the exposure - but you'd annoy a heck of a lot of people - and if we all did it, the site would likely become quite unpopular - that's keyword spamming, not being verbous and descriptive if you can do it...

Cheers,
Stuart

southpaw · Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005 7:12 pm

penalized in the sense that if too many images have too many irrelevant keywords included with them, you will get pages and pages of pictures that really dont pertain to the search. Therefore someone who has a relevant picture could thereoretically end up on page 50 (as an example) and the designer is probably not going to click through 50 pages to find that picture. I am talking about having maybe 100 pages of the type of photo a designer is looking for and in reality there should only be 25 or 30 if the keywords were more relevant to the photo. I dont have a problem with using a lot of keywords if they are going to actually help the designer find the image they want, I will use mood words as well, and maybe different variations, scientific names, etc...but to just throw in a bunch of words grabbed from left field is just going to piss off the designer. As far as how to manage the keywords, I think the reviewers can get a feel at a glance if the words are appropriate or not and if they get a sense there are too many words that dont apply, then reject the photo on those grounds. Just as they have guidelines for the picture, they have guidelines for the keywords, therefore they should be checked.
As in any search engine, the results returned arent always an exact match as to what you look for, BUT, if a maximum was put on keywords, say 25, that would make it easier for the reviewers to scan the list and see if they are relevant, and still be enough for the designers to get an accurate search back.....You dont need to use 10 different ways to say, job or business or color or blue...etc...

StuartE · Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005 7:57 pm

But are we making an assumption that too many people are using the same set of too many invalid keywords? I do a fair bit of searching at DT, and I see their search within results feature as pretty brilliant for narrowing down what you're after, especially using the back button to fine tune the search - as long as people have enough keywords... that's the kicker though - the way I search, I need people to be accurate and generous with their keywords... once I've got 1000 'women', I need the 'brunette' to have the keyword... and then I need to have her 'boots' mentioned, too... even better if it then has 'kinky' 'leather' and 'spiked' in there, too... :-)

Cheers,
Stuart

shutterstock · Joined: 22 Oct 2004 Posts: 1881 Location: New York, NY

Does it make sense why we have to re-approve photos when keywords are changed?

We get 3300 images per day submitted on average - thats at least 21,000 keywords (probably more like 50,000 - 75,000).. They're displayed for the reviewer .. but how many keywords can somebody read? How many pages does a book have on average? I would say this is a small book - each and every day if you put those keywords on a page.

It's hard to please everybody at once -- but yes, we have to please the designers first. If we start to look at every keyword - the acceptance window may move from 48 hours (business days) to longer...

We'll start to go through the library and ban users for keyword spamming.. I'm going to setup an easy system for this during this week for my employees to use.

southpaw - you should not keyword spam to compete - this is not acceptable.

Jon

StuartE · Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005 8:36 pm

I wonder if there's any common 'trend' to spamming that can be identified and filtered to make life easier, Jon? I'd figure that the worst offenders would be using words to make their images more popular from a search viewpoint - e.g. sex or sexy without any good reason, etc

(If you told people they could remove keywords without resubmission, before the 'crackdown', you'd find some would self moderate the listings rather than get culled 'when it came'...) Anything that convinces people to put accurate keywords would be a good thing, right? :-)

Cheers,
Stuart

shutterstock · Joined: 22 Oct 2004 Posts: 1881 Location: New York, NY

Thanks Stu!

I put your suggestion in an announcement.

http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8237#8237

southpaw · Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005 9:27 pm