Well mind reading technology is still a few years away so you'll have to wait I guess.

A.  The obvious answer is to do something about the outragous spam - a 10 - 15 keyword limit would sort that pretty quickly.

B. What is the alternative to relevancy ?

We all get different searches nowadays on iStock: my 'cartoon cat' wasn't too bad, though not perfect. Too many of a board game I couldn't find the cat on. As 'cartoon cat' isn't in the CV, (though a very few people have added it, which you can access by searching 'cartoon cat'), it separates into cartoon and cat, for the purpose of best match, not a best match for the phrase 'cartoon cat'. Searching by 'new' was definitely better, and cut out the vetta woman in a sort of blue catty hat/mask thing. I wikied it, obviously.

Yup, in this case, if very few others, Google Image search is definitely better; as is Shutterstock.

Relevancy and best match as searches are totally useless, means nothing. After years of keywording, spamming, etc and with gazillions of files floating around, some agencies still use these old search engines. The IS, best-match, I would have thought would serve as warning to just about everyone, yet, SS, have started to introduce this search, why?  even if its there as an option, buyers who dont really know how to search will ofcourse think this is the option to use, not knowing that all the lousy keywording, is there all wrapped up in one giant soup.
I didnt know this until lately but the actual alogarithm for all searches must be somehow be changed even if relevancy is only an option, just to fit this search-mechanism.
Relevancy is only relevant to the kind of keywording used and years and years of spamming is its foundation. No wonder it doesnt produce any results.

Why did are they manipulating all of the searches at our expense?  Because they plan on making more money by doing so.

The popular search result that helped make SS and some of us successful on SS is no more.  At best they have started to add non selling images to the first pages of the popular search and in time our best sellers will dwindle.

Another thing that most of us do not understand is that SS is most likely using cookies and third party analytic companies to serve different images to each party that visits the site.  Therefore if you use the search term cat, they know you have previously been looking at specific cartoon cats (even on other sites) they can serve you similar cartoon cat images.  And if they know you have been looking at sexy women in a Las Vegas cat house they will serve you sexy images of women.

If we really want to understand how the searches are working, we should try to understand just what SS meant while describing the requirements for a new search programmer. We should be asking our selves what the following terms that SS used in that job description actually mean to SS as well how they will affect the sales of our images now and in the future. (social graph and other factors, dynamic ranking algorithms, tracking search analytics)

I posted an old job listing for a SS search engine programmer earlier on this site a few months ago.  Now they are not going to publicly post sensitive search info in the job listing, but they do give us a few clues as to what the future holds as far as searches.

I know that various sites including SS change out third party cookies at different times of the year. Right now there are only a few cookies associated with third party data gathering services on many of the sites, but a few months ago the sites were using quite a few third party sites to track our activities as buyers.

http://www.shutterstock.com/jobs.mhtml?nl=1&jvi=o46KVfwz,Job&jvs=Indeed&jvk=Job
"Among other great benefits, Shutterstock offers competitive salaries, health and dental plans, 401k, company equity, daily breakfasts, weekly massages, discounted gym memberships"

http://www.shutterstock.com/jobs.mhtml?nl=1&jvi=oIjWVfwC,Job&jvs=Indeed&jvk=Job
"Job Posting for SS Search Engineer

We have a lot of challenging problems ahead of us, including:

    Helping customers find the images they�re looking for as fast as possible.
    Providing recommendations based on a customer�s searches, social graph, and other factors.
    Developing a framework to support rapid development of dynamic ranking algorithms.
    Creating a massively parallelized and real-time indexing process.
    Tracking search analytics and automatically acting on the results.

Our search engine is built on Perl and Solr.  Ideally you will have previous experience working with Solr and programming in Java. Being a JVM or Perl guru is an added bonus.  All candidates should have experience working on search engines and solving problems with large datasets."

Alright, tried on my lappy where I'm not logged in, search was on popular but since cookies remember your search settings I cleaned history.
RELEVANT seems to be the default search now! not only that but it shows my port in the order I always had with popular.

Alright, tried on my lappy where I'm not logged in, search was on popular but since cookies remember your search settings I cleaned history.
RELEVANT seems to be the default search now! not only that but it shows my port in the order I always had with popular.

Just tried it, clearing the cookies and youre right! "relevancy" is the default. Oh well, thanks for the coffee, good while it lasted, give it another few months and its just a mess.

Interestingly, if I go to SS where I'm a contributor via Google, it gives me 'relevance' as the default search. No stripping out of cookies or history involved.

If, however, I use Firefox private browsing and search via an anonymiser for Google search, I get into SS search with 'popular' as default. I assume this to mean that as a first timer at SS, I get the 'popular' default but as soon as I enter as a 'SS cookie-bearing' computer, I get directed to 'relevance' as default.

Dont know really? some sort of experiment I guess?  all i know is, messing around with searches, is probably the most damaging an agency can do. We have seen solid proof of that quite a few times in the past.

Frankly, Im really surprised! there is a thread in the SS forum and everyone is proclaiming lousy earnings,  yet they keep this up? I could understand IS, when they changed their searches in favour of exclusives but SS, doesnt enforce exclusivity. Still they maintain this type of search? it has not effected me too much as yet but it will.
Relevancy, is in the hands of keywording, spamming, etc and is by most experienced buyers and contributors, regarded as the worst search of them all. For the first time in seven year, this goes beyond me, cant find any reason for this at all.

Now all we need is for 100 buyers to pop in here and tell us what their default is.  I'd also like to know why buyers never seem to change from the default search?  Is it really to much hassle to click on one link?
Whenever istock change the search, it seems to have an immediate drastic effect on my earnings.  I haven't seen the same thing happen with SS, why's that?

They might also be testing different things in specific locations possibly based on their data of users' preferences or alternatively to collect data.

I'd be much more concerned if SS weren't actively refining the users' experience based on the vast amount of data such a system must generate.

Whatever is happening does not appear to be affecting my sales, either negatively or positively, in any noticeable way.

Maybe I should add that the use of any anonymiser (StartpageHTTPS Au or UK or DuckDuckGo) used in combination with Firefox Private Browsing always gave 'popular' as the default search. Any search direct via Google gave 'relevant' as default. I'm too new and too small at SS to know whether it will make a difference.

Quote from: gostwyck on August 08, 2012, 16:12

Whatever is happening does not appear to be affecting my sales, either negatively or positively, in any noticeable way.

Wish I could say the same.  This is on track to be WMY for me at SS.  Of course it's on track to be WMY for me everywhere...

YES! same here, for being SS, its bad!  heck! there is a thread under "anything goes" in the SS forum, gotswyck! go read it, it clearly states the search have changed to "relevancy" and they are all complaining about bad sales, all of them.
Theres another search being experimented with, called "instant" now this one is in its beta format but looks great, fast and accurate, cant see why they dont use that one instead. I have done hundereds of searches using this "relevancy" and its terrible! it knocks you back down on the floor.
Relevancy, was the first search ever used in the old trad-agencies, when they computerized all trannies, etc. Stones, Getty, Image-bank, used it, it was in the beginning of the 90s at that time the only one. They all dropped it like a hot potatoe! why? becuase they realized all bad keywording, spamming, lay as the foundation of relevancy, it was impossible! So, at year, 2012, SS comes along and picks it up!  unbelieavable.

They could drop it next week.  I see no need to panic and jump in to istock exclusivity.  It would be a laugh if you did and they immediately switched it back to "popular"

Well thats got nothing to do with jumping into exclusivity. Hell! search changes takes place every month in every singl agency. My reasons were totally differant.

yes well the moronic thing is, they mess around with the one and only tool buyers have to find the pic, further more, whats the point is showing all generic and everyday stuff on first 3 pages in a search and thereby taking buyers for total idiots?