[Gary Bagshawe]

just got an e-mail from alamy regarding the captioning and keywording of images.

The Description Field was always intended to simply contain background information regarding an image, unfortunately our system currently treats words in the description field as being as important as keywords and captions. This does not help the relevancy of our search results. For example an image of Big Ben in London may say in the description field that 'London is the venue for the 2012 Olympics' - This image of Big Ben with little or no direct relevance will therefore come up for a search on the 'Olympics' alongside images actually of the Olympics. We have therefore decided to take a number of steps.

We are implementing the following:-

1. We will be demoting the relevancy of the description field in the very near future, we recommend you take whatever measures necessary to ensure your search terms are in the Keyword field and only background information resides in the Description Field. If you currently have something in the description field you may want to consider moving some/all of the information into the caption or keywords fields.
The Search engine will search the Keyword and Caption fields first before looking in the Description field.

2. AlamySearch penalises irrelevant keywording so we recommend you consider your keywording very carefully.

3. In order for us to further develop the system and optimise its performance and effectiveness it will be necessary to reduce the size of the Description Field to 2000 characters (from 3000).

4. The exact timings of these changes are reliant on other projects. However we strongly recommend you make any necessary adjustments before May 31st 2007.

If you have any questions please contact Memberservices@alamy.com


Member Services,
Alamy

[Sonsey]

Thanks for the heads-up Gary

[Dave]

I so MUST get myself registered with Alamy Keep saying it, but never get round to it.

Noticed in this months Professional Photography Mag, the editor stated he sold an image last month for £147 through Alamy, which he was shocked at , as he only added the image to his submission CD to make up the numbers Looking at the shot that sold tells me many members on Pixalo could take a similar shot, so lets all join together

[Charlotte]

TFS Gary

Originally Posted by Dave

I so MUST get myself registered with Alamy Keep saying it, but never get round to it.

Noticed in this months Professional Photography Mag, the editor stated he sold an image last month for £147 through Alamy, which he was shocked at , as he only added the image to his submission CD to make up the numbers Looking at the shot that sold tells me many members on Pixalo could take a similar shot, so lets all join together

How's that for morale boosting