We have the largest collection of stock images in the world so it’s not surprising people wonder how we order over 50 million of them within our search results. We use an algorithm based on a lot of things. One factor is AlamyRank, an algorithm that has a say in the weighting of images in the sort order from each contributor.
There are a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding AlamyRank. Whether it’s the location of the contributor, the amount of time spent in the ‘sin bin’, the BHZ game, the list goes on… Well, we want to clear this up and simply say – stop worrying! Let’s break these myths down shall we?
The BHZ game
Some see it as a bit of fun, some see it as a direct insight into how they are performing…we see it as a waste of time for you. It originated in our ever popular . To take part you add the letters ‘BHZ’ to one image from your collection and, the theory is, that you can then see where said image falls when ‘BHZ’ is searched, thus getting your ‘ranking’. Using the relevant search tab you can see how many places you’ve gone up or down when the almighty ‘reRank’ happens.
We wouldn’t recommend taking part as this couldn’t be further from ‘relevant’ to finding out your AlamyRank if you tried! Why? Well firstly, we’re constantly tweaking how search works and trying new things out – so what might give your ‘BHZ’ image a boost one day, might change the next and sometimes your location may affect the search results you get. Secondly, no-one plays the game consistently. Some people put the BHZ keyword into multiple images, multiple times and others put it in the caption only, or the essential field only, or both etc etc. No consistency means irrelevant results. Thirdly, you’re only comparing your placement against other people playing the BHZ game, not the other 35,000+ photographers who have images online. This all combines to make the exercise completely pointless. If you play ‘BHZ’ – it’s time to move on.
Your QC history
The theory is that your QC history somehow affects where your images are returned in a search. There is only one thing your QC history affects and that’s how long it takes for your submission to go through QC. It has no bearing on your search placement.
If you live in a country where we haven’t got a sales office then your images are buried
We can’t think of a reason why we’d hide your images if you’re not based in a country we have a sales office. We sell to customers worldwide so this doesn’t sound like a good idea to us. This might be a surprise to you but we don’t favour any contributors over others!
Our ultimate aim is to get the best and most relevant images in front of our customers.
AlamyRank isn’t the be all and end all – it’s just one factor of many that decides how images are returned in a search. An important thing to remember is that our customers search in many different ways. Some will use our ‘new’ tab and some use the ‘creative’ search order. A lot of our customers use our left hand side bar to whittle down the search results to show exactly what they’re looking for so one set of search results is never the same as another. We also do a lot of tweaking and testing behind the scenes that will affect the search order. We constantly work on getting the search results to the customer quickly and our main focus is now on getting the most relevant images to the top of the results.
Want our top tip? Forget about AlamyRank. Stop trying to work out how it works or how often it’s refreshed. Just send us regular submissions of well edited and great images that shout above the rest and make sure your keywords are relevant to the image in question. Simple!