I see many of you still think that Fotolia searches only first 7 keywords. That is not true.

Fotolia search engine search all of your keywords asociated with the image. But there is a catch. Multiword keywords are not working. Also, only words that are in Fotolia dictionary are working. For example words like less known City names, etc will not be found, but most commonly used words will be found, no matter on which place are they.

...but most commonly used words will be found, no matter on which place are they.

That's good to hear, but I don't understand why a search for "running hare" (or "running and hare", or "running, hare") only finds a grand total of 13 photos - not including this one: http://www.fotolia.com/search?k=1104453&order=relevance  - former bestseller of mine, I might add 

Keywords "running" and "hare" are right on top of the list and separated of course....

I dont know, but take this example:


http://www.fotolia.com/id/7016486


keywords "dual" and "tube" are on the last place, and "dual tube" find this image. (and all keywords in this image works. Try it. Open my portfolio and try to find this image by any of its keywords, it works.)


Maybe some old images from V1 cant be found, but since V2 it works.

I didn't doubt you words, I just wanted to point out that all is not well in Fotolia's search engine and that there are still files which don't get found, no matter where their keywords are ranked.

And yes, you are right, my example is pre-V2...

I see many of you still think that Fotolia searches only first 7 keywords. That is not true.

Fotolia search engine search all of your keywords asociated with the image.

Sorry Chode but this is not correct statement. Perhaps situation is different for different images, but this is what I have found myself:
* I can find my images by using the first 7 keywords
* the same images are not found when I use other keywords
* "the first 7" means at the moment of upload, if you change word order later it seems to be not re-indexed
* I only tried it with several images, may be 10 or 20 so it might be different for some other files or for other contributors.

To give you a practical example, look at my image 6498934 (http://us.fotolia.com/id/6498934)

If you search by the first few words, i.e. "night railway station twilight" Fotolia finds this image.
However if you search by the words from the end of the list, e.g. "roof red reflections red blue dark" fotolia finds nothing at all.

I thought the first 7 would be used for relevance, but no.  I did some tests a couple of days ago. 

I have this image, for example:

whose first 7 keywords are: map, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, relief, macro, 2D
You can easily find it with these keywords. 

Then if I take the next three keywords (city, coast, coastline) and try to use them (in combination with one of the first 7, otherwise we get too many results), I get them too.  If I try two of these together ("city coastline", for instance), I don't get any results.

I also tried "Bahia hypsometric" (hypsometric being a very unique keyword it has) and I get the same results as with Bahia only (and in fact "Bahia" is the only word that appears beside the search box after the search).  Maybe there is some CV in FT, so some unknown keywords are ignored?

Now, a pre-V2 image (one of my oldest):

First 7: capsule, capsules, pill, pills, tablet, tablets, blister
I can find it with "blister pill" but not with "pill bubble" (bubble being the 12th keyword). I can not find it with "painkiller" also (20th keyword).

These images' keywords have not been reordered. Enlighten me, please! 

Regards,
Adelaide

3pod, I ask myself the same thing, and I wonder if this is some unsolved issue from V2 migration.  Have you tried it with your images?

Regards,
Adelaide

my images from V1 were fixed several months ago when I contacted support.

However using usual plain English words the search engine doesn't find anything when I try to use words after the 7th one. Even very recently uploaded pictures show the same result.

Perhaps Fotolia uses the words after the 7th one for relevance/more precise search; but they are definitely not used as the main key for search. At least for my pictures.

Quote from: MikLav on April 04, 2008, 06:57

my images from V1 were fixed several months ago when I contacted support.

Did you have to supply the numbers of all images that were not found, or did you just write something along the lines of "Please fix my portfolio..."?

It was done for all portfolio, I didn't provide them each individual number

I made an account after starting V2 on Fotolia. So, all my images are uploaded fter it. And, still, I can't find any image typing "paraglider, paragliding, purple" for example. And that is one of my images. I like Fotolia basically, but this "small" thing is REALLY getting on my nerves. Someone simply doesn't care that our images are not searchable. It's a shame.... I started that thread two months ago, and after several posts, I was told that Fotolia's search engine works fine and that my account could be deleted if I continue to talk like this. . So I decided to keep my mouth shut.  But, still, no one explained to me why I can't find my images using keywords I wrote.

Well, there is a simple strategy - just put 7 most relevant words in the beginning. That's what I am doing when filling the IPTC field. It doesn't matter for other stocks, but sets it right for Fotolia.

However, in case your image can't be found at all with any of the keywords, give it first a couple of days (for indexing). If it still can't be found - write to support and they will force indexing.

Unfortunately, I use Aperture to manage my images and keywords and it sorts keywords automatically - so i have no way, unless i go into each file manually edit the IPTC data, to satisfy Fotolia's desires... therefore i don't upload much there and i lose out.

Well, there is a simple strategy - just put 7 most relevant words in the beginning. That's what I am doing when filling the IPTC field. It doesn't matter for other stocks, but sets it right for Fotolia.

Yes, but remember that this thread starting in order to prove that FT search engine uses more than 7 keywords.  My two examples - one long before V2 entry, another long after it - apparently shows that only the first 7 indeed count (please show examples were this is not true).  In one example, the 8th word served as a second filter ("bahia city" returned less than just "bahia") - the 9th also worked this way, but the 10th did not.  Odd!

I could understand the strategy "let's look for the search term in the first seven keywords first, then after showing those we look for images with the term in the other keywords".  That would make sense, that would show relevance.  Now when we have keywords (such as hypsometric, in my example) that do not appear in the first seven for any image, but there are images (like mine) in which they appear after the first seven, why not give this as a result?

Regards,
Adelaide

Unfortunately, I use Aperture to manage my images and keywords and it sorts keywords automatically - so i have no way, unless i go into each file manually edit the IPTC data, to satisfy Fotolia's desires... therefore i don't upload much there and i lose out.

You can change words order while putting category and model release on fotolia website - yet it would mean longer time and more manual work, but it's a bit easier than editing IPTC data.

By the way some other stock sites do treat first keywords as more important (although counting all of them in the search); and some stock sites increase the weight of a word in search in case the same word is used in description and in keywords - but I don't remember all those details.

Your pre-V2 images are found with the first 7 keywords only, right?

Yes, you are correct: As soon as I use a keyword after the 7th the files are gone again - so in the files I tried it works like this:

keyword 1  + keyword 2: file found
keyword 6  + keyword 7: file found
keyword 6  + keyword 7 + keyword 8: file not found
keyword 8  + keyword 9: file not found