Some Artists Have Many More Tags Than 500 Character Limit

I'm not sure how that is possible. I can't get to 501 no matter what I do :)))) I'm right at or near 500 for most of my artwork

-Don't leave a space after your comma (counts as character) Sometimes this throws folks off. Also, FAA adds certain criteria for Google search algorithms to your keywords such as "fine art, prints,canvas wraps,framed,matted,metal prints etc....)

I think it's possible that me be what you are seeing?

I have yet to get close to the 500 mark without the keywords turning into spam keywords.

I think if I remember right, 500 is the max you can use on the web anyhow. And Jeffery is right about the spammers too.

The site automatically adds stuff like prints, photographs, canvas... so can't count those in your character count if looking at other peoples'.

oh, characters, not words. nevermind

I've seen it too. It seems to be the big art libraries, galleries, museums, etc, that get special privileges there.

I think that when you upload multiple images, the counter is disabled. You can then exceed the 500-character maximum. You'll see the character count if you go back in to edit the image.

"that get special privileges there."

Since there are some who have special privileges here. The sale is for this reason also much more. Such is life.

Shirley- Have you verified that you are not counting the words that you are not counting the words that get added by FAA such as prints and iphone cases? If you can do that then it needs to be determined if is a software glitch.

I find it difficult to believe anyone would need even close to 500 characters to describe an image.

before they updated that years ago, people were allowed more, if they didn't edit it since then, they probably get to keep it. otherwise it's special treatment. if the words are unrelated to the item, you can report them and they would be reduced then.


---Mike Savad

I would love to have 5 to 10 relevant keywords as a limit everywhere. Thinking of so many keywords just gets ridiculous and takes up my time. They say keywords don't mean as much anymore, and titles and descriptions are much more important.

Got an example?

There was a big discussion about this last week -- with examples. Off to see if I can find that thread . . .

5-10 words would kill the site. when zazzle did that my sales were cut in half just like that. you don't have to think up all those words. if you think 10 words is enough then add just those words.


google needs EVERYTHING.

this site needs keywords or you won't be found.


---Mike Savad

Here's the thread. Scroll down about 2/3 of the page --

http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=1922062

if you list it, it would count as a name and shame.

---Mike Savad

No, unless they did something underhanded its demonstrating a programing error, so Sean would be the only one being"shamed" and if we're going to worry about that with bugs we may as well close all bug threads now.

It's a programming error. If you copy and paste the characters from another artwork you can exceed the limit of 500

OK so it seems that is true. Probably some programming glitch. as long as it is not spam it doesn't bother me that much. Most here are not even using all their 500 words and most are missing words that should be there. Keywording here requires a lot of characters because it is not a smart search engine. If you have an ocean on a beach scene you have to put ocean, oceans, sea, seas. If it is the Atlantic you need Atlantic, Atlantic ocean as well. Then if there is a sailboat you need sailboat, sailboats, sail boat, sail boats, boat, boats, watercraft, sail, sailing, etc. I could go on and that is just a simple image.

Now professional keyworders are going to add words like, vertical, horizontal, color photo, no people, nobody. Because that is stock image standard language used by image researchers. I don't use them but I understand why and how they are used and who uses them.
Most of those extra words are rarely going to be used by art buyers on FAA so they don't matter much. I noticed one of these over keyworded images that had the standard "no people" as a tag actually was a painting with people in it. Does it matter? Just mindless copy and paste boilerplate keywording that doesn't affect anything.

Problem with 5 - 10 keywords is they would be all the same "landscape, nature, mountain" - but 500 gets to be a bit much. I sell plenty of images with a small list of keywords.

I've never tried so I haven't a clue how anyone would. I'm lucky to make over 100 characters.

Best thing is to put the work in context. Surround the work with a meaningful blog post is the way to ranked higher on search engines. A well written blog post will get shared which also increases ranking.

I was with Alamy.com some six years ago. Not sure how things are today, but back them we literally had some 3, 4, or 5 different areas on the submission form where tags could be placed. I do not remember the specific categories for each of the tag placements, but it may have been well over a couple thousand that we could use in total.

I agree 500 is too much. One way to increase relevancy would be to reduce that. To me 250 would be fine. Which is not all that different than 500 really. But how could it work to reduce it. All the files would have to be redone or lose some of the words without regard to relevancy. Or if they were grandfathered in then there would be threads like this one where people would be complaining about files that exceed the limit. I really think this is a non issue. As long as it is not spam what difference does it make how many others have? I haven't even reached my 500 limit on anything (yet). Whats the difference if others have more. Those that like just 5 or 10 words good luck ever getting your images found.

Edward,
I would consider those as either being a word or phrase. I really do think ten keywords or phrases would be sufficient. I also now understand it would only give Mike less sales, but I'm not Mike.

there are only so many combinations of things you can say about an picture in only 10 words. also keep in mind our search needs tweaking for any of this to work. there is nothing wrong with the 500 character limit, but it really shouldn't be taken down more than it already is. on any of your images can you reduce it down to 5-10 words?

---Mike Savad

Have a look to this image

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/peace-patty-meotti.html

No print for sale, but more than 500 characters of keywords...why ?

Yes, I would be happy with 5 to 10 mixed phrases and words.

that one is from 2009, so it might have been ok to do more words.

---Mike Savad

Sometimes I notice I get carried away when typing keywords and when I go back to edit the file there is a warning in red that I wen over...sometimes by 100. I think they stay that way until you go back and edit. So for some of the ones ive not edited, there are definitely over 500.

Re: the character limit.

Leave it as is. If your vocabulary parameters restrict anyone from being able to put together 500 characters into intelligible words and phrases then just leave the balance as free space. Perhaps, maybe at a later date something may/will inspire you to go back to a specific upload and add more keywords. Keywords are a wonderful tool folks!

@ Bradford, clients searching for Fine Art decor, greeting cards and so on generally don't use the same "stock photography" terminology as magazine photo editors. Frankly you would be wasting precious keyword characters. My homepage website affords myself unlimited keywords, so I bundle stock terminology as well as popular Google search terms used by art buyers. I've been contacted for numerous commercial/publication use through my FAA website as well despite the lack of stock phrases. This is not the norm however. They do prefer sites such as Photoshelter for that

On the subject of TAGS, aka keywords.........I just came across something I find disgusting based on the fact that doing something in this manner is unethical. I typed in "Peter Lik" into the search que to see if Pete had any representatives posting HIS original prints here on FAA. (During a Google search I found Pete's name associated with FAA which raised my eyebrows)

The answer to that question obviously is no, however I found MANY artist as members of FAA have no issues at all tagging/keywording their personal original artworks while using the name 'Peter Lik" or "Peter Lik artworks" in their keyword list.

Several important issues arise, most importantly this is fraudulent and misleading to shoppers. Secondly, this potentially puts the FAA website in a bad light as it "seems" it is allowing independent artist to be using the trade name Peter Lik to sell his artwork. It's obvious FAA cannot be aware of this. Capitalizing on another well recognized Fine Art photographers success at their expense is a matter of principal.

J.C., Abby?

just report them all to tech support. i've had my name stolen along with a dozen other artists here. they think the public is stupid and they use names that aren't theirs. from my understanding they can have their accounts removed for doing that. and if not, they should.


---Mike Savad

@ Mike.. I just emailed JC about this. I'm not sure the term "name stolen" is applicable in this context, however "referencing" another artist name to direct potential/prospective clients to your personal gallery is very misleading and fraudulent. As you stated, they must assume the general public including art connoisseurs and collectors are ignorant. Perhaps, since my personal style & subject matter is similar to Tony Sweet or Brenda Tharpe I can now add their names to my keywords?

--Thomas Schoeller Photography

Hello, unless I am totally confused, its not 500 keywords, it 500 keystrokes, when you upload a photo and you go start posting keywords, it not how many words, but how many characters, (keystrokes for a total of 500) then when you photo is uploaded, you then at the bottom of you photo way below where all the comments are there are all the kwy words for that photo....I just recently found out I did not have to type in flower framed print, flower canvas, so I have been going back in and re writing my keywords, the smaller the description obviously you will get more key strokes.....and that list at the bottom of your photo which shows keywords remember besides your own, others are included from Fine Art America and those would be the ones which read Flora framed prints, flora canvas, and so forth. I have no clue how someone can have more than 500 keywords. And then I am course everyone has taken note you do not even have to have a single photo featured in a group to appear on the first page of the Fine Art America search keyword page......the one and only reason why I put my photos into so many groups because it goes to the first page, until someone comes along and sponsors there work on that page and then the images get shuffled around. Also, just to inform everyone, I was told we can put our own name in the keywords this came up in a discussion forum, put as many word which pertain to yourself as well, is that acceptable......

And I had noticed, ,,,a while back why was other members name which by no way associated with my name in my own google search why were they appearing in my search. it tuned out, the association of my name, and my lap top, and the name of my business these other members without knowledge had the same exact keywords in there keyword of there work....and google crawlers or what ever they are called picked that up and placed those members with my personal name.....i had friends say why were those people included in my google search, they did not have the same last name,,,,it was the keyword association in there keywords.....so I went back in to my account went thru the latest photos I had perhaps included my name in keywords and no sooner I removed my name so did the other members stop appearing in my personal keyword search on google. I can not image the odds of that to occur must be unreal. they both had idential keywords which also was reference to my personal domain name.....now that was a fluke if there ever is one.......

I do not know about anyone else, but if I took a photo in another region I will include that region in my keywords, I would not include a photo taken in Colorado and put a New Orleans keyword...this is something you just do not do. You keyword the photo to location. This is an example, no names....I started to notice a member now how do they generate so, many sales, day in day out, ,,,I discovered it had to do with something in their keywords, and I found it. it turned out this individual gallery was taking the place of the google search for FAA I brought this to Abbie attention and I was informed google is now responsible for creating that placement of the google search results, ..but it still seems to me if this individual did not have the link in their keywords to begin with they would not appear on index page of Fine Art America...I had explained no other members appear on the Fine Art America google results,....I sorta thought that person was piggy riding or over riding the keyword search results.....in order words this members when they signed on was taking the place of a link click on Fine Art America. And I only notice this occur when the individual would sign onto Fine Art America. My opinion.

Then I also concluded was that occurring on just my computer because I happened to click in on that artist site to view the particular sale they may have made. I have noticed it has stopped. And I also notice this member has not had any sales in a while as well.....I wonder if their is a connection. So, then I looked into further,,,,and that person happened to be one of the featured artist on the Main page of Fine Art America. ow was I signed in or out of Fine Art America I can not say for sure.. I just know it was happening and took note of that.....

I typed in Peter Lik a long while back and then recently again, and saw the same thing. The problem I had is the person isn't just using the name for keywords, they actually tried to take the same pictures maybe to make people think they are really buying a Peter Lik print.
That is very wrong and unethical

Totally not right and it's not just one person...it's a handful. I hope JC or Abbie get to it soon. Mike's right, they should lose their accounts over this. If you hit the "see more" under the key words, you can see lik's name. One even has Georgia O'Keefe listed right under Peters name. I guess that's a sure fire way to get sales for some.:/

I reported the "over 500 characters" problem on June 30, 2012 in this thread http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=1922062

Corporate Art Task Force - Islamabad, FEDERAL - Pakistan seems to get over the limit it with ease.

I can't see that FAA did anything so far to fix the problem.

Unless Sean is going to hire secret elves to help support ( I don't see that happening) for mis-tagged images being dealt with, there is no way one or two people(?)...is Abbie the only tech support or just the only one we have a face for, I can't remember? Anyway, she wouldn't have time to do anything else for the next 2 yrs except that one thing it is so rampant. Sorry to disagree with the premise that 500 keystrokes is a good thing, imo all it does it seriously encourage "stretching" and allows for the ease of blatant mis tagging of images. I don't know why the system can't be taught to allow singular terms if someone types in a plural...really, how hard could that be? That would eliminate a good number of keystrokes right there. Also, the need to put in 'phrases', why can't the system pull images containing the individual words? That would eliminate even more keystrokes. It would not be so abused if one was limited to fewer keystrokes, that would decrease blatant mistagging, and by mistakes or over site on the artist's part as a lower amount would become more precious and one would use only the Most relevant terms.

This one topic about how Search is setup here truly bugs the crap out of me. I think it's a bad system and I don't think there is any desire on the part of FAA to change it, partly because it 'inflates' how many images 'FAA' has on any given search subject or term, but it's extremely misleading. It's overstated bragging rights imo, to say 'look - we have 10,000 images for "XYZ"....NO, you might have 5,300 but because you allow so many keywords if someone has an itty bitty tiny dot of pink on their work, they can put pink dot in the tags (legitimately because of the rules). Well, it might be 'legal' but I promise they wouldn't have wasted keystrokes on that term if the keystrokes were more limited. There would not be as many images if search and keywording were actually done more accurately. I find the fault is as much with faa as I do with an artist on this.
Examples:

http://fineartamerica.com/art/all/colorful+cat/all?page=10

On page 10 of colorful cat search, I count 20ish of the 36 images on this page that are either not including a cat or are not what I would tag as colorful. I realize this can be somewhat subjective but....btw, colorful cat is my favorite example so far on this topic since I have an image that should and eventually does show up for the search term and I have previously reported many, many, many items in this search to support in the past on two or three occasions.

http://fineartamerica.com/art/all/pink+zebra/all?page=1

For a completely random image search I typed in pink zebra. Total number of "Pink Zebra" images are 190....according to current search. Well, if I'm a customer looking for PINK ZEBRA art, for me personally I would have to say that only about 65 of the 190 listed would be accurate for what I meant when typing in pink zebra. So, that for me as a customer has me sifting thru around 125 +/- non-relevant images. It would be even worse for a more popular search term. For FAA, this means they can say "Hey Look Google! We have 190 Pink Zebras!!" No FAA, you don't...not really....
Part of my point is misleading due to faa and the artists.

I would be curious to know how many pink zebras others interpret as I realize this is also quite a bit subjective.

sorry, tried to repost the links so you could click them. You'll have to copy/paste if you want to see the pages I was on.

the zebra one is fair because the search doesn't do phrases at all well and it found the word zebra, even if there was no pink. the cats, well that's just spam. i can tell you that less characters would be very bad. especially due to the plural thing, phrases, and i want to add mispellings. on zazzle i am limited to 9 words, because the 10th is my name. on there it's even harder because they remove words as they become products. my sales are super slow because of that. but they include titles and descriptions i believe, in their search. this place doesn't. the best thing you can do is report it - we are the tiny elves.


---Mike Savad

we are the tiny elves, lol!

Search could easily be made to not have to do plurals and to automatically include image title and artist's name. Also I think it should filter searches when you add a + between two words and it obviously does not do that now.

it would be easier with a report button with a box stating what words they are. this way we don't have to track down addresses and such.

---Mike Savad

@ Kevin good point. Many of Peters Fine Art prints are from some fairly iconic locations and National parks etc. I personally have shared 2 of the same locations. Screw Auger Falls and Otter Cliffs from Boulder beach. He knows of my compositions and results (I have his sales reps card & ph number) and I quite eagerly have them let Pete know I kicked his ass on both of them :))) Point being, I'm not so far as accusing these photographers for creating beautiful artwork from the same locations as Pete...It's the fact they have gone so far as to keyword "Peter Lik" to mislead art buyers who may not research any further into whom the actual artist is.

@Melissa. I understand the jest of your post above and you certainly bring to light some valid points, including examples. However I politely disagree with thinking the keyword search algorithms are a bad thing and don't work.

here's why: 500 characters allow the professional and/or serious artist who researches popular PHRASES that are used in the Google search engine. Phrases as in "groups of words that describe", with a comma at the end of course. My goodness I have in front of me on my desk at this very moment an 8.5" x11" notebook with 250 FULL pages of phrases and keywords for over 20 specific genres of Photography. Each phrase is a common search term typed into Google for specific subjects.

Once you have this information in hand, suddenly you look at 500 characters and feel like you've been buried alive! 500, that it??

I guess the best we can do is self monitor when you notice someone has blatantly used a keyword just to draw attention to their uploads. Adding "cat" to a "dog" painting makes that person look like an ass. It certainly will annoy the prospective client. However..... no crime committed. Now, if I were to start using the names "Kevin McNeil" "Tony Sweet" "Tom Till "Adam Schallau" "Alain Briot" "Elizabeth Carmel" to MY keywords I would expect to have them (those artist) potentially take legal matters up with me or have my account suspended until they were removed.

This, for example, are 973 characters that Corporate Art Task Force - Catf - used on an upload in May 2104.

.... surah baqarah,surah bakra,islamic art,abstract islamic art,kufic calligraphy,corporate art task force,surah al ikhlas,surah,quranic verses,quran,holy prophet's sayings,sunnah,hadith,ayat,ayaat,masjid nabvi,prophet's mosque,medina,madina,saudi arabia,uae,dubai expo 2020,dubai,art,mosque,masjid,places of worship,corporate art task force,islamic calligraphy,islamic,arabic calligraphy,persian calligraphy,minaret,oil on canvas,muslim,islam,art,etsy,heritage,arabian motives,arabic motives,arabian nights,ali abdullah saleh,yemeni,islam,islamiat,islamic,arabian,arabic,allah,islam,quran,quranic,muslim,musalmaan,dubai expo 2020,famous artist,famous painting,beautiful calligraphy,beautiful,islamic architecture,islamic motives,islamic symbols,arabic,arabian,saudi,sheikh,arbi,english translation,arabic translation,holy book,religion,religious,god,islamic god,99 names of allah,prophet,prophet's saying,sunnah,ummah,leonid,leonid afremov,oil on canvas,palette knife,paintings

but only 500 are allowed

I asked Corporate Art Task Force how they do it. Here's the Zee's answer:
We enter the keywords online. Our technical team is the expert behind uploading, entering info / keywords and producing google presence overall.

"producing google presence overall" it the key here.
"producing google presence overall" is a lot easier for those who can obviously use as many characters in their keywords as they want.

Good find Christine. I never saw this coming or thought possible to circumnavigate the limitations FAA has designed into each artist site.

The elves would have no time to create or load artwork if they were to report all the mistagging that happens here. Some of which I think is unintentional, but some is quite blatant.

@Thomas, you are going with the presumption that everyone wants to tag correctly! Unfortunately we see that doesn't always happen. I stand by my comment that it does inflate and skew the number of images in any one subject search. Also I still think the keyword search algorithms could be improved. There is always room for improvement, I'm just not seeing any evidence of that being a priority for search here.

@Thomas, is this notebook one you have been filling out overtime? Any tips for us on finding what popular google search terms are because I for one was not aware there was a way to "get a list"!

I'll add that if FAA wants to pay a dollar for every mistagged or spam image reported, I'm in!

christine wrote:
******************************************
but only 500 are allowed

I asked Corporate Art Task Force how they do it. Here's the Zee's answer:
We enter the keywords online. Our technical team is the expert behind uploading, entering info / keywords and producing google presence overall.

"producing google presence overall" it the key here.
"producing google presence overall" is a lot easier for those who can obviously use as many characters in their keywords as they want.
******************************************

i don't get it. so they enter online, so how is that different? or are you saying they have a higher allowance?

I'm with Menega, I don't understand either.

So, now I see that the tags that are showing are limited to the first ten, and all the superfluous add-on terms that FAA used to cram in there are gone. Anyone have any more info on this?

You are right Valerie. I just checked mine and only the first ten are showing now.

I think all this is part of the work in progress of improving the site...........

The visibility has been reduced to 10, which is a good thing. It offer less resistance for someone to click on one and be taken to another artist's page.

The total number of keystrokes (or tags) entered at the time of upload remains the same. Pick one of your images and select 'edit.' I've conducted a preliminary test and hidden tags are still being recognised by the search engine at this time.

Yes, I saw that all the keywords are still there, just hidden. Does it now matter in what order we put them? (or maybe it always has?)

I do not know, Valerie, if order matters. The exact search engine criteria will remain a secret with the owner for obvious reasons. Personally, I put my strongest tags at the beginning - I always have.

i'm 50-50 for the idea. i liked to be able to see what the tags were, just never liked it linking to things. plenty of times it made me scratch my head why something came up the way it did. if i typed something and some other image came up i wanted to see why. or if i typed in my name i would have liked to see it in the list. on the plus side the competition can't steal my words. i still rather see all the words, minus the extension on the page.

---Mike Savad