Alamy stock photography - Manage images - Additional annotation options

Additional annotation options

We intend to introduce a number of additional annotation options to the Alamy Search Engine which will help improve the accuracy of search results for customers. You can prepare for these options by including them in your keywords now and so avoid having to edit them at a later date. These will be stored in the database and will come into effect when the changes to the Search Engine go live.

These options are not mandatory but their significance is likely to increase as the number of images on Alamy grows. If you use these advanced features in conjunction with an understanding of AlamyRank they will help you get the most out of your images on Alamy.

Proximity

Tells the search engine that words adjacent to each other should receive a higher relevancy score.

Syntax: A space, or a comma and a space, between words.
Tip: By just adding a space you will save valuable character space.
Example: Giant squid blue whale
Outcome: A customer searching for giant squid will see this image further up the search results than a search for giant whale.
Benefit: Your images where two or more words logically live together will be seen higher up a search when the customer searches for those two or more words.

Exact match

Tells the search engine to only find results where the search terms are an exact match for the keywords.

Syntax: Double quotation marks “ ”.
Example: “Golden Gate Bridge”.
Outcome: This image is only found for searches where the phrase in double quotes is an exact match for the customer search terms, so in this example this image will not be found for a search for ‘Gate’.
Benefit: When customers search for proper names ‘John Smith’ ‘Statue of Liberty’ ‘The World Cup Final’ images keyworded in this way will be found earlier in the search results.

Weak match

Tells the search engine that words within square brackets are related, but not necessarily to be treated as an exact phrase.

Syntax: Square brackets around words [ ].
Example: [giant squid] [blue whale]
Outcome: This image can be found under searches for giant squid or blue whale, but it can also be found for searches for squid or whale etc.
Benefit: This will improve the relevancy of your images This helps you define to the customer that it’s the squid that is ‘giant’ and the whale that is ‘blue’ but also that the words on their own are relevant too.

Do not stem

The search engine automatically finds derivations, including plurals and singulars of words using a technique called stemming. For example, a search for ‘dog’ also returns images keyworded ‘dogs’ and a search for ‘laugh’ also returns images keyworded ‘laughing’. You can use the “Do not stem“ feature to disable stemming for a particular keyword.

Syntax: ˆ placed before the word you don’t want stemmed.
Example: ˆglass
Outcome: This image can be found under searches for glass but not glasses.
Benefit: If you feel Alamy’s automatic stemming may result in your images coming up for irrelevant searches use this ˆ indicator to avoid this happening and thus damaging your AlamyRank.

Ordering

If there is an obvious order of priority in the keywords you have applied to an image, we recommend you enter the keywords according to this order. Equally if the decision is too difficult to apply to an image, you probably don’t need to worry about it.

Syntax: Type the keywords in order of importance.
Example: If an image features a dog in the foreground and a cat in the background then the following order of keywords would be appropriate - dog, cat
Outcome: A search for ‘dog’ would return this image higher up the results than a search for ‘cat’.
Benefit: This will improve the relevancy of your images.

Example 1

Caption: Family on a beach, portrait
Essential keywords: family beach holiday vacation smiling happy
Main Keywords: families [four people] “mature men” “mature women” “mature man” “mature woman” child “family group” mother father brother sister son daughter siblings children parents kids mum dad “day trip” portrait happy together shirt dress [yellow T shirt] [blue T shirt] togetherness [family hugging] summer
Comprehensive keywords: [casual clothing] water sea ocean coast coastal beach shore outdoors outside natural square image colour image colour color photography [mature male] [mature female] woman women pre-adolescent child [young family group] shorts summer sunshine warm happiness smile relaxing relaxes relaxed relaxation embracing embraces embraced hug hugging affection together “waters edge”
Description: Not relevant
Location: Cape Town, South Africa
Date taken: -

Example 2

Caption: 30th July 1966 1966 World Cup Final at Wembley England 4 v West Germany 2 after extra time The England team minus Nobby Stiles
Essential keywords: Football World Cup Final 1966 England celebration
Main Keywords: Wembley stadium sport history soccer team trophy celebration victory winning “England team” “Bobby Moore” win success victory winners victorious English, 1966 1960’s sixties teamwork achievement famous “black and white” “B&W” captain skipper team tired emotional group stadium “competition champions”
Comprehensive keywords: “Jules Rimet Trophy” “Jack Charlton” “Gordon Banks” “Roger Hunt” “Bobby Moore” “Geoff Hurst” “George Cohen” “Bobby Charlton” “Alan Ball” “Martin Peters” “Ray Wilson”
Description: 30th July 1966 FIFA World Cup Final at Wembley England 4 v West Germany 2 (after extra time) Goal scorers were Martin Peters (1) and England striker Geoff Hurst scored three, thus becoming the only player ever to have scored a hat trick in a World Cup final. England were managed by Sir Alf Ramsey. BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme’s description of the match’s closing moments has gone down in history: “Some people are on the pitch. They think it’s all over.” “It is now!”. The Queen presented England Captain Bobby Moore with the Jules Rimet Trophy and were crowned World Cup winners for the one and only time in their history.
Location: Wembley Stadium, Wembley, London, England
Date taken: 30 07 1966

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