Hello everyone!

Apologies for the confusion / mystery surrounding 'AlamyRank' - truth is, it's a very complex algorithm and not a simple forumla - also, because we need to make tweaks and improvements to the search functionality as time goes on, there is a certain amount of fluidity to the precise workings of it all. CTR, Sales history, Keyword placement (essential, main, comp) and keyword proximity (where words appear within the search box) also come into it as one big mix that gives your images a 'score' which is then fed into the search results. This all happens in fractions of a second to return images in what is probably the fastest stock image search engine in the world.

Put simply though, the only tactic you can employ is to submit your best work and keyword it thoroughly with a high degree of relevancy.

Thinking specifically about CTR then. CTR (Click Through Rate) does have an impact on your ranking (as part of the big mix mentioned above), and we give you the average figure across all of Alamy so you can see how your images are performing compared to your competition.  If your images are seen many times in search results but never clicked on, this will have a negative effect on your rank and vice-versa. The search engine will also mix some results around to give everyone a fair chance, particularly if you are just starting out and have the median rank. Sales and the sales value have positive effect on your rank, so the more sales you make and the higher the value those sales are contribute significantly.

We are also doing lots of work behind the scenes on the search results:

http://www.alamy.com/Blog/contributor/archive/2012/10/19/5164.aspx

Further info here:

http://www.alamy.com/Blog/contributor/archive/2012/10/29/5241.aspx

...and this is all yielding positive results for our customers:

http://www.alamy.com/Blog/contributor/archive/2012/12/20/5288.aspx

So hopefully this clarifies things a little for you. In  a nutshell - CTR is important, but so are sales, keyword relevancy, Keyword proximity and all the workings the content team are doing behind the scenes on developing the search results.

Oh, and a couple more points for you that will hopefully be useful!

- "I had a sale but no zoom"

We can only match up a zoom to a sale if the customer completes this in one go, eg, search, zoom, buy. Quite often the customer will search and then come back later to buy, so we can't match these two up. Also, sometimes the picture researcher who finds the images, then passes them over to another account for purchasing, again, we can't match these two up as related.

- Play the "BHZ" game

Our advice on this? Don't bother. It only tells you how well you are doing compared to everyone else playing the BHZ game and it is very inconsistent because some people have multiple images in there, some have BHZ in the caption only, some in the essential keyword field, some only in the comprehensive field etc etc. Combine that with the 'big mix' (above) of elements that determine the ranking, you can quickly see that your BHZ placement is going to tell you virtually nothing. The better way to see how you are performing is to keep an eye on some real searches and see where you are coming up within those results.

Finally, in terms of frequency of updating the ranks, it's not set in stone but it works out that roughly every 100 days we will update the results using the previous 300 days data.

Hope that helps!

James Allsworth
Content Executive
Alamy