Confusing SmugMug search issues

NWMtnGuy · June 22, 2008

Over the years as I have keyword annotated photos I have not been entirely consistent. For example, sometimes a photo with a mountain gets keyworded "mountain" and other times "mountains". It's not a big deal on my local system because if I search for "mountain" I get all images with either "mountain" or "mountains" as a keyword.

I always assumed that SmugMug search would work the same way. When I upload my photos they bring their keywords with them. However, I recently noticed that if I search for "mountain" on my SmugMug site it only returns photos with "mountain" in the keyword list or caption, but not "mountains". I understand why searching for "mountains" would not return results for images tagged with "mountain" as "mountain" does not meet the search criteria, but it seems like it should at least work the other way around.

Any feedback on this? Is there any way to force this behavior when someone searches my site?

Dale

Andy · June 22, 2008

I'll ask, thanks... stay tuned.

Steve Cavigliano · June 24, 2008

Hi Dale,
The only way to have the search results display images tagged with mountain and mountains is to add both as keywords. The system considers these to be 2 separate words. So both would need to be added as keywords.

Steve

NWMtnGuy · June 25, 2008

Hi Steve,

Thanks for clarifying this, though I have to admit it just doesn't seem logical. In almost any search-based system I have ever used a search for a term that is a subset of a longer term will usually return results containing the longer term. For example:

A search for "paint" will find items containing the word "painting" because "paint" is a subset of "painting". Likewise, a search for "car" will find items containing the word "cars" because "car" is a subset of "cars". Of course, it makes sense that searching for "painting" may not find something with the word "paint" because "paint" does not meet the minimum search criteria for the query "painting". Hope this makes sense.

Is there anyway to force this behavior on SmugMug? I find it to be almost inconceivable that someone searching for a word like "mountain" will not find images tagged with "mountains".

This means that a photographer who wants to sell images tagged with a particular keyword must either:

A) Accept the fact that unless someone searches for the EXACT keyword that has been entered the image will never be found. If he has tagged his photo with "mountains" and an interested buyer searches for "mountain" his image will never show up in the search results.

Add every conceivable search term as a unique keyword to every image. In other words he would have to add "lake" and "lakes" as separate keywords, and probably some other things with the root word "lake". This seems really inefficient, especially since SmugMug limits the number of keywords. (And keep in mind that many images already have multiple keywords, even without covering yourself by making sure you have a singular and plural version of each one!)

OK, I hope this makes sense. To go back to my original example I find it shocking that someone searching for "mountain" will never find images with the keyword tag "mountains"!

Thanks,
Dale

pilotdave · June 25, 2008

I'd also like to see an improved search feature. I use the regular search box at the top of my pages and a keyword search box on my keyword pages. The keyword search requires a perfect match. I'd expect the regular search to be a bit more flexible. I use a lot of multi word keywords on my site. Doing a keyword search for "john d" for example would bring up all the pictures that I've keyworded with "john d" (obviously). But a regular search for "john d" would suggest the keyword "john" and not even find that I have a keyword "john d" which I find somewhat annoying.

I'd like to see an advanced search page. We'd be able to choose what to search, and how to combine search terms or not include others. Choose to search keywords, captions, filenames, gallery names, gallery descriptions, categories, subcategories, etc. Sometimes I want to find all the pictures of "john d" but not the ones from france, so I'd like to be able to exclude keywords.

Basically, I'd like for smugmug to provide more search options.

Dave

canghuixu · June 25, 2008

Advanced search
I would like to second this. In particular, the ability to combine searches so I could for example search for photos with a particular keyword in a particular category, subcategory, or gallery.

A concrete example: right now I identify my personal favorites with the keyword favorite. I would like to be able to locate my favorites within particular categories, or subcategories, or even galleries. Right now I do this with a rather clumsy workaround: I manually add some identifier of the category as a keyword for the photos in the galleries in that category. So, for example, I add china as a keyword to all the photos I upload from China, and can reference my favorite China photos with a combination of keywords, favorite and china. When I am ambitious, I add the gallery ID as a keyword to all the photos in a gallery so I can reference the favorite photos in a gallery with a combination of the gallery ID and the word favorite.

Obviously, this is clusmy, and I would love to be able to do something like...

canghuixu.smugmug.com/category=xxxxxx&keyword=yyyyyyy

pilotdave wrote:

I'd also like to see an improved search feature. I use the regular search box at the top of my pages and a keyword search box on my keyword pages. The keyword search requires a perfect match. I'd expect the regular search to be a bit more flexible. I use a lot of multi word keywords on my site. Doing a keyword search for "john d" for example would bring up all the pictures that I've keyworded with "john d" (obviously). But a regular search for "john d" would suggest the keyword "john" and not even find that I have a keyword "john d" which I find somewhat annoying.

I'd like to see an advanced search page. We'd be able to choose what to search, and how to combine search terms or not include others. Choose to search keywords, captions, filenames, gallery names, gallery descriptions, categories, subcategories, etc. Sometimes I want to find all the pictures of "john d" but not the ones from france, so I'd like to be able to exclude keywords.

Basically, I'd like for smugmug to provide more search options.

Dave

canghuixu · June 25, 2008

Question on searching gallery names/keywords
While I'm on this, is there some way of searching for gallery names/keywords but restricting to my own galleries? I would like to create pages with virtual categories (for lack of a better word) that would be the result of searching within my own site for particular keywords. Right now if I go to the search screen and look for 'redwood' in the gallery name this is the query

http://canghuixu.smugmug.com/search/index.mg?searchWords=redwood&searchType=Album&x=0&y=0

Is there a way of restricting this to my own site?

canghuixu wrote:

I would like to second this. In particular, the ability to combine searches so I could for example search for photos with a particular keyword in a particular category, subcategory, or gallery.

A concrete example: right now I identify my personal favorites with the keyword favorite. I would like to be able to locate my favorites within particular categories, or subcategories, or even galleries. Right now I do this with a rather clumsy workaround: I manually add some identifier of the category as a keyword for the photos in the galleries in that category. So, for example, I add china as a keyword to all the photos I upload from China, and can reference my favorite China photos with a combination of keywords, favorite and china. When I am ambitious, I add the gallery ID as a keyword to all the photos in a gallery so I can reference the favorite photos in a gallery with a combination of the gallery ID and the word favorite.

Obviously, this is clusmy, and I would love to be able to do something like...

canghuixu.smugmug.com/category=xxxxxx&keyword=yyyyyyy

papajay · June 26, 2008

NWMtnGuy wrote:

...

...OK, I hope this makes sense. To go back to my original example I find it shocking that someone searching for "mountain" will never find images with the keyword tag "mountains"!

Thanks,
Dale

The issue Dale describes is one that anyone who uses keywording extensively runs into. It's challenging, to say the least, to assure consistant keywording every step of the way..."stuff" happens!

("Do I use 'mountain' if there's one in the scene and 'moutains' if there are two or more...or do I use 'mountains' genericly, regardless of the number?").

My nephew was "Jimmy" until he turned 18 and asked, "Please call me James from now on." If I keyworded him as "Jimmy" for 18 years, then start keywording him differently ("James") after age 18, I'd have to do keyword searches for both to find all my nephew's photos.

Site-wide keyword edit capability is part of the solution, in my opinion.

My best friend's name is "Gordon" (so is my Dad's). So I quickly learned that keywording both of them as "Gordon" creates an ever-growing problem over time. The "solution" was to go back and keyword them differently...a laborious task on a gallery-by-gallery basis.

Gordon (the friend) can be captioned as Gordon, Gordy, even Gord, depending on my mood...but now he is always keyworded as "Gordon". My dad can be captioned as Gordon, Dad, DadJ, Pop...but he is always keyworded as "DadJ".

canghuixu · June 26, 2008

Yes! Site-wide keyword editing would be a huge plus! At least some kind of search and replace. That would make cleaning up inconsistencies MUCH easier.

Re the issue of needing to specify multiple keywords for the same idea since searches may be done under different variants, i.e. gordon, gordie, gordy, maybe there could be some kind of site specific lookup table that we could create that would map variants to a specified keyword that would be used in the photos. That way photos wouldn't need multiple redundant keywords specified, just one, and the table specifies all the variants that should map to that one.

And if there is no easy way of making it possible to search for keywords within categories, maybe some kind of option to have the category ID, subcategory ID, and gallery ID added as keywords to each photo.

papajay wrote:

The issue Dale describes is one that anyone who uses keywording extensively runs into. It's challenging, to say the least, to assure consistant keywording every step of the way..."stuff" happens! ("Do I use 'mountain' if there's one in the scene and 'moutains' if there are two or more...or do I use 'mountains' genericly, regardless of the number?").

My nephew was "Jimmy" until he turned 18 and asked, "Please call me James from now on." If I keyworded him as "Jimmy" for 18 years, then start keywording him differently ("James") after age 18, I'd have to do keyword searches for both to find all my nephew's photos.

Site-wide keyword edit capability is part of the solution, in my opinion.

My best friend's name is "Gordon" (so is my Dad's). So I quickly learned that keywording both of them as "Gordon" creates an ever-growing problem over time. The "solution" was to go back and keyword them differently...a laborious task on a gallery-by-gallery basis.

Gordon (the friend) can be captioned as Gordon, Gordy, even Gord, depending on my mood...but now he is always keyworded as "Gordon". My dad can be captioned as Gordon, Dad, DadJ, Pop...but he is always keyworded as "DadJ".

GoodEye · June 26, 2008

Also, please add filename to the search!
n/t

papajay · June 26, 2008

canghuixu wrote:

Yes! Site-wide keyword editing would be a huge plus! At least some kind of search and replace. That would make cleaning up inconsistencies MUCH easier.

Re the issue of needing to specify multiple keywords for the same idea since searches may be done under different variants, i.e. gordon, gordie, gordy, maybe there could be some kind of site specific lookup table that we could create that would map variants to a specified keyword that would be used in the photos. That way photos wouldn't need multiple redundant keywords specified, just one, and the table specifies all the variants that should map to that one.

And if there is no easy way of making it possible to search for keywords within categories, maybe some kind of option to have the category ID, subcategory ID, and gallery ID added as keywords to each photo.

Just to clarify....I'm not expecting or asking for "look-up" tables for the gordon, gordie, gordy, "gordo" variants for keywords (the variations of nicknames, etc. would seem to be virtually endless for all users, all names etc.)

I would figure on having only one keyword for a particular individual (my dad is "DadJ"). I might call him Gordon in one caption, and Gordy in another caption, and "Daddy-O" in a third caption. Personally, I don't worry about captions...partly because of such variations, and the fact that I don't necessarily caption every photo in the first place.

But I do try to keyword every photo...and that's where consistancy rules if searches are to be of any value. If I decide to keyword my dad as "DadJ", that's what I use across my entire collection, even for the photos I have of him when he was in diapers (and clearly not a "dad" at the time).

I don't know enough about coding to know if mountain versus mountains, for example, is addressed by look-up tables or by some singular versus plural logic that is genericly applied across all words....that's over my head. But the find/replace capability is what I'm after.

EDIT the last sentence: The site-wide find/replace would actually have to be something like find, SELECT, and replace to work effectively. e.g. "Find all the Gordon images, SELECT all the individual images of my "Best friend Gordon" that will be re-keworded to be Gordon1, then Replace. Re-run the Gordon search, SELECT, all the "My dad Gordon" images and keyword them as DadJ so I can tell the two Gordons apart going forward.

Confusing SmugMug search issues

Comments