Author Topic: Portfolio with spam in the titles - where do we stand? (Read 9633 times)

Lana · « **on:** October 03, 2016, 07:39 »

Hi all,

I would like to know if anyone of you ever reported the ports with spammy titles and if so, has anything been done about it by SS? Does Shutterstock react to these reports?

One of my images used to be #1 under the keyword "Honduras" (don't laugh at me) for almost a year, a few other images of mine were in the first lines and sold a lot, then lately I noticed more and more illustrations coming to the top of the search with spam in the titles, like this portfolio, for instance: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Aquir

I'm not looking who to blame for lower sales

I'm just thinking whether it makes sense to report the spammers? And do you think they really make their way up the search because of the spammy titles?

Thanks

Microstockphoto · « **Reply #1 on:** October 03, 2016, 09:13 »

you can report them, but ss wont do anything about it. i had images rejected and pointed out to ss that they had accepted similar images already, but they said that what happened in the past is no guarantee for the future. i guess its the same for spammy titels, if you report it, theyll brush it aside

YadaYadaYada · « **Reply #2 on:** October 03, 2016, 10:26 »

Spam title and what's approved are two different topics, not related at all. I don't know how to report anything on SS. I know I reported spam keywords on IS and they did nothing, never changed them, nothing. Waste of time as far as I see, sites do nothing.

We all got the big scary warning but as you point out Lana SS does nothing on their own to police this. Why not? I think they should give these people warnings to fix their titles.

Only way it would hurt my sales is if I have similar images, like red approved seal and the buyers just went for first page. Otherwise, first isn't best and doesn't mean buyers will buy just because they see it first. Doesn't work that way.

BD · « **Reply #3 on:** October 04, 2016, 00:05 »

Quote from: Lana on October 03, 2016, 07:39

Hi all,

I would like to know if anyone of you ever reported the ports with spammy titles and if so, has anything been done about it by SS? Does Shutterstock react to these reports?

One of my images used to be #1 under the keyword "Honduras" (don't laugh at me) for almost a year, a few other images of mine were in the first lines and sold a lot, then lately I noticed more and more illustrations coming to the top of the search with spam in the titles, like this portfolio, for instance: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Aquir

I'm not looking who to blame for lower sales I'm just thinking whether it makes sense to report the spammers? And do you think they really make their way up the search because of the spammy titles?

Thanks

All you have to do is look at "best match" to see it helps the spammers. Check out "Halloween" and "Christmas." The best match looks different on SS vs other sites because of this (in a bad way for Shutterstock). "Halloween" is the best example of this. I think SS will see more and more spammers messing with their search unless they do something (right now the spammers are being rewarded with good search placement). Some of the spammers have also started to put the spammy words below one or two normal sentences so if you are in the main search you won't see the spammy words (you have to actually click on the photo and go to that photo's page).

BD · « **Reply #4 on:** October 04, 2016, 00:16 »

Quote from: BD on October 04, 2016, 00:05

Quote from: Lana on October 03, 2016, 07:39
Hi all,

I would like to know if anyone of you ever reported the ports with spammy titles and if so, has anything been done about it by SS? Does Shutterstock react to these reports?

One of my images used to be #1 under the keyword "Honduras" (don't laugh at me) for almost a year, a few other images of mine were in the first lines and sold a lot, then lately I noticed more and more illustrations coming to the top of the search with spam in the titles, like this portfolio, for instance: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Aquir

I'm not looking who to blame for lower sales I'm just thinking whether it makes sense to report the spammers? And do you think they really make their way up the search because of the spammy titles?

Thanks

All you have to do is look at "best match" to see it helps the spammers. Check out "Halloween" and "Christmas." The best match looks different on SS vs other sites because of this (in a bad way for Shutterstock). "Halloween" is the best example of this. I think SS will see more and more spammers messing with their search unless they do something (right now the spammers are being rewarded with good search placement). Some of the spammers have also started to put the spammy words below one or two normal sentences so if you are in the main search you won't see the spammy words (you have to actually click on the photo and go to that photo's page).

Edit: BTW the titles on IS are not searchable and do not affect search placement, but they are searchable and affect search placement on SS.

BD · « **Reply #5 on:** October 04, 2016, 00:29 »

Quote from: BD on October 04, 2016, 00:16

Quote from: BD on October 04, 2016, 00:05
Quote from: Lana on October 03, 2016, 07:39
Hi all,

I would like to know if anyone of you ever reported the ports with spammy titles and if so, has anything been done about it by SS? Does Shutterstock react to these reports?

One of my images used to be #1 under the keyword "Honduras" (don't laugh at me) for almost a year, a few other images of mine were in the first lines and sold a lot, then lately I noticed more and more illustrations coming to the top of the search with spam in the titles, like this portfolio, for instance: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Aquir

I'm not looking who to blame for lower sales I'm just thinking whether it makes sense to report the spammers? And do you think they really make their way up the search because of the spammy titles?

Thanks

All you have to do is look at "best match" to see it helps the spammers. Check out "Halloween" and "Christmas." The best match looks different on SS vs other sites because of this (in a really bad way for Shutterstock). "Halloween" is the best example of this. I think SS will see more and more spammers messing with their search unless they do something (right now the spammers are being rewarded with good search placement). Some of the spammers have also started to put the spammy words below one or two normal sentences so if you are in the main search you won't see the spammy words (you have to actually click on the photo and go to that photo's page).

This means that 1/3 of the search is useless for you while the spammers guarantee they are at the top of that search. Of course this affects your sales (in a negative way) as well as theirs (in a positive way).

Edit: BTW the titles on IS are not searchable and do not affect search placement, but they are searchable and affect search placement on SS.

BD · « **Reply #6 on:** October 04, 2016, 00:36 »

Sorry for all the posts. I must have been hitting "reply" instead of "modify" when I added to what I had already posted.

Microstockphoto · « **Reply #7 on:** October 04, 2016, 02:38 »

and its still a mess

Noedelhap · « **Reply #8 on:** October 04, 2016, 05:12 »

When I have to buy stock images, I always grow frustrated with pages of similar images (and often badly keyworded), so the biggest danger of similar crappy images is that buyers leave the site. It takes time to weed through all that crap, so SS should really do something about it, because as a buyer it puts me off.

graphicV · « **Reply #9 on:** October 05, 2016, 11:05 »

Type Halloween in search (chose vector), and you will see bunch of vectors (7 vectors on first page) from same contributor with spam titles in popular category. All of these vectors are new files (ID number is new). All vectors have same title - Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Halloween.... From 100 vectors on first page, 37 have spam title. This is ridiculous!

Btw, this is my first post, and my english is not very good, but when I saw that I was so angry that I had to share it with you folks.

stockastic · « **Reply #10 on:** October 05, 2016, 13:54 »

How long can this continue before it really starts bringing SS down? Buyers will lose patience, no matter how low the price. You can't waste people's time with junk. And at the rate new stuff is supposedly flowing in the door - if it's being polluted with spam cr@p like this, the cost to SS to eventually clean it up would be enormous. That's the biggest problem for microstock going forward - if you lose control over what's being added, you'll never be able to fix the problem with fancy search algorithms, but neither can you pay people to go back through tens of millions of images and weed out spam keywords and titles.

Shelma1 · « **Reply #11 on:** October 05, 2016, 14:25 »

I fear the only solution is for SS to disallow editing after approval...which would be a shame, because I sometimes realize later that a different keyword or two can make a big difference in sales. The spammy images do tend to drop down in the search results, but it takes time. Meanwhile the buyers must be wondering what's so great about these images to make them that popular. And the better stuff hardly gets to see the light of day because of the flood of spam, which is very discouraging.

stockastic · « **Reply #12 on:** October 05, 2016, 14:33 »

I quit shooting stock a long time ago. I shouldn't even be in this forum any more. But I can't look away. It's fascinating, watching a giant ship like SS hitting the reefs, starting to take on water. Where is the captain?

Chichikov · « **Reply #13 on:** October 05, 2016, 14:45 »

Few days ago Shutterstock has started the run to 200.000.000 images… They cannot be concerned about the image spam…

marthamarks · « **Reply #14 on:** October 05, 2016, 15:31 »

Quote from: graphicV on October 05, 2016, 11:05

Type Halloween in search (chose vector), and you will see bunch of vectors (7 vectors on first page) from same contributor with spam titles in popular category. All of these vectors are new files (ID number is new). All vectors have same title - Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Halloween.... From 100 vectors on first page, 37 have spam title. This is ridiculous!

Btw, this is my first post, and my english is not very good, but when I saw that I was so angry that I had to share it with you folks.

Your English actually reads pretty well, graphicV, so don't worry about that.

And welcome to this often-frustrating Forum!

marthamarks · « **Reply #15 on:** October 05, 2016, 15:33 »

Quote from: stockastic on October 05, 2016, 14:33

Where is the captain?

Golfing in the Bahamas?

marthamarks · « **Reply #16 on:** October 05, 2016, 15:36 »

Several months back, I stopped uploading to Shutterstock. Adobe/Fotolia and Dreamstime get all my new material now.

DT doesn't sell nearly as many of my images as SS and AD/FT. However, DT's $$ per download average is higher than the other two, so I stick with it.

BD · « **Reply #17 on:** October 05, 2016, 17:57 »

Quote from: Shelma1 on October 05, 2016, 14:25

I fear the only solution is for SS to disallow editing after approval...which would be a shame, because I sometimes realize later that a different keyword or two can make a big difference in sales. The spammy images do tend to drop down in the search results, but it takes time. Meanwhile the buyers must be wondering what's so great about these images to make them that popular. And the better stuff hardly gets to see the light of day because of the flood of spam, which is very discouraging.

The other solution would be for them to change the code so that if there is more than one of the same word in the title or keywords it doesn't effect search placement. I don't know much about coding, but they have said repeatedly they are really good at it. If it doesn't affect search placement people will stop doing it. After doing this they could actually start removing ports or give warnings (some sort of action until the titles are fixed). I'm not a big fan of them following in IS shoes by being too picky about things because that has worked out poorly for their search, but I really think if they made examples of a few of the big offenders word would get around and it would strongly discourage/stop it. I don't like the idea of not being able to change keywords/titles for the same reason as you. I usually miss ones I later find are really important. I think changing how the search functions is the best option. In fact, they could change the search so that if there is more than one of the same word in the title the image is actually punished in the search (and let us know they are doing this). That would certainly put an end to it. Again, I don't know much about it so maybe it is just too difficult to change?

Edit: Or they could make it impossible for you to put in a keyword more than once in the title. They already do this for the keywords so it seems they should be able to do it for the titles. This would actually probably be the best solution.

graphicV · « **Reply #18 on:** October 05, 2016, 18:00 »

Quote from: marthamarks on October 05, 2016, 15:36

Several months back, I stopped uploading to Shutterstock. Adobe/Fotolia and Dreamstime get all my new material now.

DT doesn't sell nearly as many of my images as SS and AD/FT. However, DT's $$ per download average is higher than the other two, so I stick with it.

Thanks marthamarks!

Actually, I follow this forum a few years, never post before, but I appreciate all the advice and experience of other colleagues who have helped me a lot. But I agree with you that it has become a little bit frustrating forum

DallasP · « **Reply #19 on:** October 06, 2016, 18:07 »

Quote from: graphicV on October 05, 2016, 11:05

Type Halloween in search (chose vector), and you will see bunch of vectors (7 vectors on first page) from same contributor with spam titles in popular category. All of these vectors are new files (ID number is new). All vectors have same title - Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Halloween.... From 100 vectors on first page, 37 have spam title. This is ridiculous!

Btw, this is my first post, and my english is not very good, but when I saw that I was so angry that I had to share it with you folks.

Your English is better than some of the native speakers!

As far as the spam goes, when I first started this microstock journey Shutterstock was one of the pickiest * sites. Now it doesn't even seem like they look at files ... and it would seem definitely not titles.

Luka · « **Reply #20 on:** October 07, 2016, 05:47 »

Something wrong is still going on with search results also. For example, I have a few images for the Chinese New Year 2016. This year, I've made a few for the upcoming year. I sell the old ones, but I don't sell anything from the new ones. Why would someone buy something that is already becoming obsolete?
More over, I have also a few calendars for 2016 and 2017. I had a sale for a calendar 2016 and the next day, from the same location, I have sold the same type of calendar, but for the year 2017. My guess is that they didn't find the right one after the first search. This is stupid!!!

Microstockphoto · « **Reply #21 on:** October 07, 2016, 08:17 »

why dont you sell the new ones? because between last year and now 50 million images were added. my guess is buyers find images they need and they are not yours. as for someone buying similar images from your portfolio, probably they have bookmarked you. i know some buyers have my portfolio bookmarked for specific images.

Justanotherphotographer · « **Reply #22 on:** October 07, 2016, 10:14 »

I can't believe it would be too hard to make words in the title/description only count once in the search weighting irrespective of how many times you put it there.

panicAttack · « **Reply #23 on:** October 07, 2016, 13:11 »

Why they even sent those emails to almost everyone if they are not doing nothing about that.

Lana · « **Reply #24 on:** October 07, 2016, 14:36 »

Quote from: panicAttack on October 07, 2016, 13:11

Why they even sent those emails to almost everyone if they are not doing nothing about that.

Something even tells me that those emails simply encouraged more title spam as not everyone knew about the "option"

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Author Topic: Portfolio with spam in the titles - where do we stand? (Read 9633 times)

Lana

Microstockphoto

YadaYadaYada

BD

BD

BD

BD

Microstockphoto

Noedelhap

graphicV

stockastic

Shelma1

stockastic

Chichikov

marthamarks

marthamarks

marthamarks

BD

graphicV

DallasP

Luka

Microstockphoto

Justanotherphotographer

panicAttack

Lana

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