Dreamstime definitely inches forward towards greatness with the keyword feedback they provide to their contributers on the sales page.
I find this newly available information extremely useful, as it helps me analyse the effectiveness of my keywords, as well as help me understand the line of thought of the buyers and designers. Those insights can increase the efficiency of keywording dramatically.
It has been - rightfully - said before, that whilst keywording an image, adopting the prospected buyer's perspective is extremely helpful in finding the right keywords, and thus efficiently reaching the target groups for an image. This approach is often proven in keywords matching the sold image.
Having the keyword feedback tool Dreamstime provided, however, is also rather mind boggling, at times.
For instance, this image was recently sold, and found with the search query "Girl with Shopping Bag". Incidentally, none of those words are actually included in the keywords. It's a boy, with a phone.
Another example of weird keyword strings, on which an image was found and bought on dreamstime is the following portrait of a man in soviet attire, against a black background. It’s primarily a low key image, but was found using the keywords: “banner white young”. I presume White has a relevance, as I used the keyword “Caucasian”, and relates to the complexion of the skin. As to Young: you’re as old (or young) as you feel, but I fail to see the reference with “banner”. Interestingly enough, none of the keywords were used to describe this image.
I'm all too aware my keywords are sub-par, and I have a long way to go, but even performing the same search, I could not find the file of the boy with the phone. It's easy to overlook these rarities, and exclude them from the analysis, yet the whole algorithm and search trajectory, resulting in a buyer ending up at looking at and even buying this specific image when he / she was probably looking for something completely different is intriguing.
There surely are plenty of examples of similar freak finds, and I'd love to hear about them!
