Stock House Thursdays: PhotoShelter.com
Following up last week’s analysis of NationalGeographicStock.com I will now take an in depth look at how handles PhotoShelter.com keywords.
These aren’t really “reviews,” in that they will have no thumbs up or down at the end. This is not intended to be a recommendation or otherwise about any of the stock houses I will analyze. Most of the elements I’m looking at don’t necessarily have an objective right or wrong answer. The only thing that really matters is that the photographer know the correct way to keyword for the individual stock house.
If you haven’t read my introductory post for this series, on the various ways stock houses differ in their keyword standards, you probably should read 10 Ways that Stock Houses can be different in their Keywording Standards first.
I hope to provide an in depth look at how stock houses deal with keywords, and how their search engine works in order to give their contributors a complete set of requirements so that they can keyword their images get maximum exposure at the site.
For those of you with some gumption, you should read the complete introduction and methods behind these analyses: Image Keywording for Stock Houses: The Methodology.
Plurals:
- Result: PhotoShelter returned the same results for each set of keyword searches for regular verbs, such as boy and boys, or dog and dogs. However they returned different results for all irregular plurals, such as child and children, knife and knives, and mouse and mice. Interestingly, even for the regular plurals, Photoshelter returned the results with the exact search phrase being at the top of the list. In other words, if you only keyword boy, your image will be returned in searches for both boy and boys, however, you will be closer to the front for boy and closer to the back of the results for boys
- Prognosis: You do need to include the plural form of any of your keywords.
Synonyms:
- Result: PhotoShelter returned different results for each set of keyword searches, except for couch and sofa, which were very close, however, I couldn’t find another set of synonyms that matched, so I have to assume this is simply coincidence.
- Prognosis: You do need to include all appropriate synonyms for your keywords.
Variant Spellings:
- Result: PhotoShelter returned different results for each set of keyword searches.
- Prognosis: You do need to include all appropriate variant spellings for your keywords, including British spellings, and 1 or 2 word variations, such as makeup and make up.
Verb Forms:
- Result: PhotoShelter returned the same results for each set of keyword searches, except for the irregular forms of any verbs.
- Prognosis: You do not need to include all forms of any verbs, EXCEPT for any irregular forms, such as ran, stood, or slept.
Other Forms of the Word:
- Result: PhotoShelter returned the same results for every non-verb form of each word.
- Prognosis: You do not need to include all non-verb forms of any keyword.
Phrases:
- Result: Each search for the variations of wooden and chair returned different results.
- Prognosis: You do need to include keyword phrases as single keywords, such as New York, and wooden chair.
Words in a Keyword Phrase:
- Result: PhotoShelter returned more results for a word within a keyword phrase.
- Prognosis: You do not need to include the individual words as keywords, in other words, if a word is in another keyword phrase, you do not need the individual keyword. For example, you only need wooden chair, not chair, wooden chair, and wooden.
Prepostitions:
- Result: Mixed results: PhotoShelter treats all prepositions as legitimate search word. In other words, searching for waiting in line will return different results from waiting line.
- Prognosis: It appears that you do need to include all appropriate prepositions in your keyword phrases.
Periods:
- Result: In searches, PhotoShelter appears to ignore periods at the end of a word, such as Mt. or St., however it does recognize a period inside a keyword, such as D.C. or N.Y.
- Prognosis: You do need to include periods inside any of your keywords.
Hyphens:
- Result: PhotoShelter recognizes hyphens in search.
- Prognosis: You do need to include the hyphenated versions of any of your keywords.
Apostrophes:
- Result: PhotoShelter does not recognize apostrophes in searches.
- Prognosis: You do not need to include apostrophes in any of your keywords.
Capitalization:
- Prognosis: PhotoShelter doesn’t pay any attention to the case of any letters.
Abbreviations:
- Result: PhotoShelter returned different results for each set of keyword searches.
- Prognosis: You do need to include all common abbreviations for your keywords.
Individual Letters:
- Result: PhotoShelter returned the same results for all my individual letter searches
- Prognosis: If appropriate, you can include individual letters as keywords.
Numerals:
- Result: PhotoShelter returned the same results for all my numeral searches
- Prognosis: If appropriate, you can include numerals as keywords.
Tab Delimiter:
- Prognosis: Unclear
Alphabetization of Keywords:
- Prognosis: PhotoShelter does not put all your keywords into alphabetical order.
Keyword Weight:
- Result: There was no indication that images were returned based on the number of keywords or the order.
- Prognosis: No weighting based on number of keywords, but maybe for keyword order
Number of Keywords Allowed:
- Result: PhotoShelter has no restrictions as to the number of keywords
Disambiguation of Homographs:
- Prognosis: PhotoShelter does not help the searcher out with keywords with multiple meanings. If you use the keyword trunk, you better also have elephant, tree, car, or luggage if you hope to have this image found
Faceted Search:
- PhotoShelter offers none of the usual faceted searches, such as format, category and file type, etc.
- Prognosis: Therefore, it is very important that you do need to keyword all words found that are in these faceted searches, such as; horizontal format, vertical, black and white image, vector, color illustration.
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A few additional notes about PhotoShelter.
I could find no keywording guidelines anywhere on PhotoShelter.com. This is surprising considering how much excellent content they have for photographers on many aspects of running a photography business and website.
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I hope this helped you understand how PhotoShelter deals with keywords. With this information you should be able to modify your keywords appropriately and see an immediate increase in you numbers.
Previous Stock House analyses:
- NationalGeographicStock: Keywords and Search for Stock Photographers
- The Search Engine at Fotolia and How to Keyword for It
- Image Keywording and Image Search at Dreamstime.com
- How AgeFotoStock Handles Keywords
- Image Keywording for Alamy.com
- Image Keywording for 123rf.com
- How Shutterstock.com Handles Keywords
