Tags.....

Yes, I see!

What am I missing? I'm on my phone

That's definitely a lot easier to read.

oh good, the spam is out again. i'm hoping it will stay this way this time?


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

What are the changes? I'm not noticing anything yet. Maybe I need to clean my temp files and cache.

it used to say - mike savad photographs, iphone bags etc -- now its back to just words. without the repeats.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Cool. That would be less clutter and easier to read. Thanks Mike.

That's good. Hopefully it will stay that way.

for a while it did, then he switched back for some reason. but i really do hope its there to stay.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

To me,..having tags so prominently displayed serve only one purpose......To readily get potential buyers off our art and onto images FAA wants people to check out .

Could there be any other reason??

i don't know how many buyers click on those though. it would be far, far, more effective if they were utilized to search our own store rather than the site. google picks up on these links and ends up sending people to the search rather than to the store itself.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

It's somewhat disheartening when I click on the tag "kentucky lake" for one of my images, and it goes to a rural scene that is not mine with no water at all in it, and the tags under that image have 7-8 different states as tags. Nothing in that particular image has anything to do with Kentucky Lake.

you can report those links btw, and have them smacked around a bit, or whatever the current technical jargon is.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

I could make a full time job out of reporting people that are spamming with tags. I wonder how often potential customers get frustrated and quit trying to wade though hundreds of unrelated images trying to find one they want.

That particular artist has been notified Greg.

Much appreciated, JC. Did you do a Search for "kentucky lake" and that particular image loaded? I guess that shows how tags not related to an image can throw anyone (artist) out of a specific category, and lead a customer off a potential sale.

JC,

Since you are around, could you tell us why our tags are displayed on our pages and are clickable ?

Nope, above my paygrade.

My guess is yes, so the viewer can find related images.

"It's somewhat disheartening when I click on the tag "kentucky lake" for one of my images, and it goes to a rural scene that is not mine with no water at all in it, and the tags under that image have 7-8 different states as tags. Nothing in that particular image has anything to do with Kentucky Lake."

Yup, that is like the guy that has a billion photos of hub caps, hood ornaments, fenders and other care parts (details) of old cars he took at a car show in Monterey California. There is absolutely nothing at all in the pics that shows anything about monterey. He could have taken those photos at Harrahs in Las Vegas. He dominates search on the Monterey. Or at least he used to. Not sure because when I first discovered that an other aspects of the FAA search, I stopped caring about the FAA search to any great degree. I do the best I can to get the best keywords in title, keyword box and descriptions and then I forget it. No way I am every going to win the war of the search.

Way to many big sellers way out in front of me and too many spammers. Not a knock on FAA, spammers are everywhere. Part of doing business on the net.

I spend two hours cleaning up the mess that Rayban knock off guy put on my wife's FB page.

Can some one post the link to the new ideas or suggestions thread please? Thank you.

JC,

So, may I surmise, that after using my own tags, hopefully, someone comes on to my art work, and then by using my own tags FAA gives this someone an opportunity to leave.?

"So, may I surmise, that after using my own tags, hopefully, someone comes on to my art work, and then by using my own tags FAA gives this someone an opportunity to leave.?"

That is exactly what happens Roger. I just checked it out.

This was the kind of thing that a poster in one of the threads from yesterday was trying to say he was against made a poor choice in the words he chose to express himself.

As I said in that thread yesterday, I agree that I don't like it and I wish that Sean would reconsider any links on our pages, once the buyer gets to our pages, that give them a way out.

However I can see why he is doing it and as much as I don't like it, he has a perfect right to do it and it is smart business for FAA. Not so good for me, imho.... but I will live with it.

I need to elaborate on that a bit.

Those links DO NOT take the buyer off your AW.

This is another reason why I would never advertise anything but links to my AW and never to FAA or Pixels. And why I have the auto posts to FB and Twitter turned off.

I only post directly to FB and Twitter with specific links back to specific images on my AW.

You may surmise what you like but the only answer I could give would only be my own supposition as I am not privy to the business decisions and again, well above my pay grade.

So this apparently isn't as great a thing as I originally thought? Oh well....

Mike Savad - Interesting that those types of things can be reported.

David King - I too could spend a day of it.

Learned something new today. Thanks

Andrea

OK, first of all live by the search die by the search is a very true statement. Really the only thing that will help you stand out in the search are sales or relevant keywords. Believe it or not, the latter can lead to the former.

There are only a few ways to make FAA's search work for you.

1. Sell a LOT through your own marketing and then the search results will start working well for you especially if you continue your marketing. Take a look at Thomas Zimmerman or Mike Savad as examples.

2. Produce work that has little competition but a viable market. Look no further than me as an example.

3. Use keywords others are not using but people actually search.

Let's use one of your pieces as an example. Most of your work is in rather saturated areas so it would require marketing to get seen and sell but not all.
Then there is this. There IS a market for this image and it is well done so you have at least one scene that fits rule 2 but you epically fail with that image on #3. Allow me to explain why.



Here are the keywords you use.
jewel box
st. louis
forest park
fountain
venue
tourist attraction
easter
glass
windows
planters
plants
spring
water
missouri
wedding location
wedding venue
architecture
reflection
24-70mm
tamron
andrea silies
d610
nikon

To be very blunt, no one except other photographers looking for an example of an image shot from something they are considering buying care what equipment you used to shoot the scene. There is not a client in the world that would look to buy images shot with a Nikon D610 and a Tamron 24-70. None. Wasted space.

Now, beyond that, I went to see how saturated the market is on this particular subject. Not many images at all so yours can be seen. Well, it would have been seen had I not searched for Saint Louis Jewel Box. You don't have Saint Louis as a tag. Oh, if I search for St Louis it is there but you are cutting out half the market that might actually be looking for this scene not using both. You are not helping the market that is looking for St Louis Landmarks find you either. My guess is arboretum might be used as a search term for those that forgot the name of the place. Oh, btw no one looking for myriad other combinations of words will find you either because there are many many words that apply to this scene that you did not use.

Want the search to work for you? Market off FAA or shoot more scenes that are not in saturated markets that have a market then keyword them well.

Floyd,

I never bothered with my "private" website...since I found no reason to.

It's long and cumbersome.( does the "s" come after "artist" or after "website" ?)..and it's not really my own.....I can't use it as I want...I can only use it for work directly connected to FAA anyhow.

It doesn't come up on Goggle search ( my standard FAA page does),

So I tell people to goggle my name and then click on Fine Art America ( It always comes up first. Followed by all the other sites I'm on)

I don't know if I'm prepared, at this time to put all my eggs in , this "artistwebsites" basket,

JC, I put the camera info at the bottom of the list so I don't forget what was used. It's not there with the intention to help ppl find my images, so I figured no harm, no foul. It's the first 500 characters that matter....correct? Someone else said the first 5 have the most impact. St. Louis is 2nd. Landmarks would be a great word to add....thank you!

I just did a search for "elk sparring" and found a cow elk by itself with "food and beverage" in their keywords. Seems to be stretching it a bit. I'm sure I need to try to think of more applicable key words, but I want to make sure they are pertinent too. My stuff has seemed to moved up the ladder with that search criteria a little bit even without sales.

Yesterday I did a rudimentary search using "elk" and I got to like page 25 or something and gave up (very saturated). So many images were extremely grainy. I can't imagine those had any sales because I hear said in this forum they won't print stuff that isn't up to par. So I don't think it's just sales that gets you to the front of the line, but what do I know. I'm still new and learning. If I sound like I'm complaining, I'm not. I'm just trying to learn how to navigate within the parameters allowed. Everyday I learn something new and that's a step in the right direction.

Thanks for the advice.

Agggghhhh. It keeps changing. Or at least my understanding of how to do it (tagging) keeps changing. I put lots of time into my keywords and descriptions. And what I understand about what I should be doing keeps changing - I think. And that's based on stuff I read in the forum here because to my knowledge there is no other place to get this knowledge - like no official "this is how key words work at FAA" guidelines anywhere.

So, for example, when I first joined, I was just putting single words with a comma and space between them. That was based on nothing I'd read except that you should have keywords and should separate them with commas.
Then, way down the line, I found out that putting a singular word in did not turn the image up if the searcher used the plural of the word and vice versa. So I put countless hours into going back into edit and adding plurals/singulars.
Then, way down the line, I found out that it was a good idea to include important phrases - like New Mexico or Texas barns. So I put countless hours into going back and adding important phrases.
Then, again way down the line, I read that if you put in phrases, the search would turn your images up whether the searcher put in the phrase or one or the other of the words. So putting "New Mexico" in the keywords would work for any searcher looking for "New Mexico" OR for "new" OR for "Mexico". So then I figured I was wasting keyword space/characters as well as my own time when I put in New Mexico,new,mexico when all three items were relevant to the image. So I stopped doing that and let the phrase or expression work for me - and once again spent hours going back and "fixing" my keywords. (A better example might be something like "red Texas barns" which I had assumed would work for the searcher who used "red" or "Texas" or "barns" or "red barns" or "Texas barns" or even "Texas red").
And then (but not necessarily in this sequence, I've lost track) I read that the order of the keywords was important and that I should always put the very most important ones in the first five, followed by the next five (no one seems to think it matters much about order after 10). So . . . you guessed it . . . back to the cursed keywords to re-organize them.
Then I read that they'd changed things and singulars would turn up plurals and vice versa so I went back and deleted a bunch of what I now considered redundant keywords.
And recently I've read that I should include all possible iterations like Texas barns,red barns,texas,red,barns, which is what I used to do before I thought I should change it.

And if "photos" "photography" "art" etc is really gone now (that's fine with me), should I go back once again and add those words that are relevant to my own lists?

And what about apostrophes? I had assumed that if both girl and girls were no longer necessary, girl's and girls' weren't either. But apparently that is not the case.

Would someone in the know please tell us how the search works here at FAA. I don't have to like it and I'll try not to complain if I don't. But I really would like to know how it works.

Roger, the s comes, um um um, oh wait, that is why I use JCFindley.com that redirects to the AW. Much easier.

Andrea, I don't know if the first five are more important or not. What is very important is phrases. Wedding venues in Saint Louis as a phrase will come up before the sane words listed separately if someone searches for that phrase.

There are 25 things that affect the search order but sales and keyword relevancy are heavily weighted. When I say relevancy I don't mean it is what the picture is but phrases as in the example above.

JC...good to know. I was thinking the exact opposite....that as long as I had the main key words listed and if someone searched using a phrase, assuming my words would be in that phrase, then it would pick up on those words. Phrases will eat up the 500 character limit faster. I *was* thinking condensing was more prudent. Still learning.

i never add the camera- your exif shows that info. use that space to add whatever you can to attract people - that fits. while it was hinted that the first 10 words are looked at the most. i don't know if that's a thing or not. phrases are only important if its important. phrases are good for town,state or a saying of some kind.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

If someone does a search for "girls" for example and I have "girl" as my keyword....will my photo pop up or not? Do I have to have both plural and singular in my keywords? I thought keeping things simple (singular) would work if someone was using plural except obviously when a word like shelves were used and I only used shelf.

it used to be that you would have to add every version, but they are using stemming now, which now means the plural is pointless. however if the ending changes too much, then add the plural just in case. girl and girls - they both show up. tomato and tomatoes... i'm not sure. i do know people typing girls - will get girl things. the plurals when forced don't matter much. though i think if you add a + plus first, +girls when you do a search you'll force the search. but i don't think anyone knows that.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Thanks Mike.

Genrally, FAA's position is there are 25 things that affect the search, that is it. IF we said how the search actually worked people would game the system.

I am not in on how it works btw, everything I know I learned by pure experimentation using my own work and trial and error.

Yes, plurals are not needed anymore but no need to take them off. Yes, "red barn" will place better than red,barn in a search for red barn all other things being equal. I have no idea about apostrophes but I do them separate.Photography art and such are added by FAA they just don't show on your list.

I'm not asking to know how the search works. I'm asking to know how keywords work. To my mind that is two entirely different things. It should be no secret that you either need to put in both the singular and the plural of a simple, regular noun or you don't in order for it to turn up in a search. And I know things change. But there are no guidelines anywhere that I know of.

And I do appreciate those who have figured things out by experimentation sharing what they have found out so thank you, JC and Mike and everyone else who does.

"Yes, "red barn" will place better than red,barn in a search for red barn all other things being equal." Thank you. But I am also taking from this that red,barn WILL turn up red barn. And red barn WILL also turn up searches on just red or on just barn. Right? Of course I'm ultimately interested in position within the search results, but more importantly I'm interested in knowing what works (however inefficiently) and what does not :)

And I stumbled on the apostrophe bit when I keyed in "fathers day" on a few images assuming that searches for fathers day, father's day, and fathers' day would all turn up the image. Wrong :( Not knowing this kind of thing is extremely time consuming, not to mention aggravating :)

And red barn WILL also turn up searches on just red or on just barn. Right?

Yes

RE:..Red Barn
For the hell of it..I checked

Red Barn
Red, Barn
and
Barn, Red

All the above listings have 10,000+ images

The first 2 images are the same on all 3 , ( using "Red" and "Barn" as separate tags)....Many more of the same images move around a bit on those first pages.( some use "Red Barn" as a tag)

That first fine image is #3 on the "Barn" only page.


I also found by mistyping that "Red Barm" has 13 images.....If the artists mistype how many potential buyers might mistype?

I use common misspellings all the time.

" red barn " can really be a red shed ( 8 x 10 )...a bird house designed as a red barn ....red cherries that could " possibly " be sitting on barn wood...barn owls and pieces of barn by default...

stemming and phrases can create a false positive or positive false?

that barn owl thing.

cow catcher
and a number of other odd combo's leads to spam like results. and i don't think there is a way to force a phrase like you can on google. i've confused myself a number of times entering contests... why did i put that in? oh it's because its a part of something else.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

I haven't read all the posts here, but if it hasn't been said already, I'd just like to say thank you for cleaning up the tags!! It will make it SO much easier to go back and edit, add, subtract and organize them, because now I can actually see them clearly on a list and see what's missing. I have a gallery "Statuary," but I didn't have the word in my tags, lol.

Now, if they were just alphabetical it would be easier to spot the duplicates (if any).