15 Keywords Limit is a Problem

RoundAmerica · January 2, 2009

I've wondered why my keyword searches were not pulling the proper results, and I discovered that there is a limit of 15.

Why? Even Flickr has unlimited keyword tags.

I use Breeze Browser Pro to tag all of my photos, and I always have more than 15.

Can I purchase the ability to have more than 15 on my site?

Andy · January 2, 2009

RoundAmerica wrote:

I've wondered why my keyword searches were not pulling the proper results, and I discovered that there is a limit of 15.

We actually index 30, the help page is out of date

Why? Even Flickr has unlimited keyword tags.

Not actually true:
http://www.flickr.com/help/tags/?search=keywords#37

RoundAmerica · January 2, 2009

Andy wrote:

We actually index 30, the help page is out of date
Not actually true:
http://www.flickr.com/help/tags/?search=keywords#37

Thanks, Andy. Looks like flickr does 75, which I guess I remembered as being essentially unlimited.

My longest keyword list is 56.

Is there a way I can pay extra to get all of them indexed? Or is there any other way to automatically get the more important keywords indexed, which are the ones at the end of my lists rather than the beginning? If others are using an automated system like Breeze Browser Pro, the most effective way is to go from broad to specific keywords...so others will have the same issue I have.

Happy New Year,

Bill

Andy · January 2, 2009

Hi Bill, no, I'm sorry, 30 is the max. I wish I had a better, different answer for you

dmc · January 2, 2009

RoundAmerica wrote:

...
My longest keyword list is 56.
...
Happy New Year,

Bill

how can a pic have 56 different keywords???

I just can't imagine it, i'd like to see an example of what you are doing...

I'm just curious...

RoundAmerica · January 3, 2009

dmc wrote:

how can a pic have 56 different keywords???

I just can't imagine it, i'd like to see an example of what you are doing...

I'm just curious...

I know it seems odd. But here's the philosophy using a photo of a ferry boat filled with people leaving the dock at Fisherman's Wharf headed to Alcatraz with the American flag flying in the breeze:

1. We are in the travel business. We use keywords for photo purposes, editorial purposes, marketing, and advertising purposes.

We have web sites by continent, country, region, state, city. So:

North America, USA, west coast, California, San Francisco, San Francisco California, California - San Francisco (this last one gives a nice alphabetical list by state)

2. We code our company name, trip web site, and generic tour web site:

Round America, www.roundamerica.com, www.roundamerica.us

3. We have travel web sites for each city and state, so we then code the web site names and urls:

California tours, www.tour-california.us, Alcatraz Tickets, www.alcatraztickets.com

4. Then we use generic travel keywords that describe what we do:

[FONT=&quot]roadtrips, [/FONT][FONT=&quot]roadtrip, [/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT][FONT=&quot]sightseeing, road trips, [/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT][FONT=&quot]tours, tour, sightseeing tours, sightseeing tour, trips, trip, travels, travel [/FONT]

5. Then we add date tags:

2003, 2003-06-26, 20030626 (because some sites have trouble with dashes), June 26 2003

So, that's 30 so far.

6. Then we get specific about what the photo provides or is used to promote:

[FONT=&quot]Alcatraz tours, [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Alcatraz tour, [/FONT][FONT=&quot]ferry, ferries, Alcatraz ferry, Alcatraz ferries, Alcatraz tickets, Alcatraz ticket, boats, boat, national parks, national park, penitentiary, penitentiaries, prison, prisons, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, day tours, day tour, night tours, night tour, National Park Service, [/FONT]people, customers, flags, flag, American flags, American flag, Alcatraz trips, Alcatraz trip, Fishermans Wharf, docks, dock, departures, departure

That's 66.

7. Then, because I haven't figured out how to use the Shizam slideshow to generate shows for my WordPress blog with multiple keywords, I started adding a string to use to identify photos that I wanted to group for editorial purposes but not pout in a separate gallery:

alcatrazdeparture

That's 67.

As an advertiser with Yahoo and Google since 1996, we have been diligent in identifying every keyword that a customer might use in a search engine, and we advertise under all of those terms -- both singular and plural. Detail-oriented is my middle name. We generate about 12 million unique user visits annually, so we know it works. As we have already identified the keywords to use to promote a tour, it has been easy to copy and paste those into Breeze Browser Pro.

Unfortunately, tags 31 to ?? don't get indexed, so the tags embedded in 40,000 photos aren't working for me. The way to most effectively use Breeze Browser Pro is to go from broad to specific, but this puts the more precise keywords at the end of my list rather than the beginning.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

PBolchover · January 5, 2009

Before Smugmug started this limit, there was a lot of abuse with Pros keywording every photo in a gallery with every keyword that applied to just a single photo (thus boosting their search results).

My gripe with the limit is that it's only pros that have an incentive to cheat the system, so the restriction should only apply to Pro accounts. (I've several photos with 20 people in them, where the keywords were broken with the old limit.)

Andy · January 5, 2009

RoundAmerica wrote:

5. Then we add date tags:

2003, 2003-06-26, 20030626 (because some sites have trouble with dashes), June 26 2003

Talk about overload.... the date is already in the metadata

RoundAmerica · January 7, 2009

Andy wrote:

Talk about overload.... the date is already in the metadata

First, that is not necessarily the case. For some reason, in my case, many of my photos lost the dates or the dates magically changed to a different year. I believe that happened when changing computers; whatever we used in the move process wiped out the dates. And I'm 60 years old; I actually have photos taken with film before we had personal computers. :-)

Second, we use our photos for a variety of purposes on a variety of different sites as I explained above. Some sites drop dashes or insert symbols along with the dashes. Many searches will not pull up just the year from a date; their search programs are set for an exact match on the keyword. On your site, for example, your search program pulls anything and everything in some cases and nothing in others. Take my photos for July 6, 2003 in Anchorage and Seattle. Search for 2003-07-06, and get over 1,000 results, but there are only 23 photos tagged 2003-07-06. Search for 20030706 and get nothing, though all 23 photos are tagged 20030706. The photos in this gallery have less than 30 keyword tags, yet only 18 of the keywords show up under the photo -- and none of them are the variations of the date. See http://roundamerica.smugmug.com/gallery/7025386_u8FMR#449813427_rr99J-A-LB In addition, it doesn't seem to matter what order I enter the keyword tags in; your system just seems to pick and choose what it likes. My order is shown in the edit window, but the order displayed under the image is in an order that doesn't appear to have rhyme or reason.

Third, most people do not enter dates in a numeric sequence that allows for chronological sorting, so when someone is looking for a photo or news item on a specific date, they enter the Month Day and Year rather than numbers. Yet the chronological numbering works for us for many reasons. It's also much easier to use search strings that don't have spaces.

Fourth, sometimes the date we want is not the date a photo is taken. For example, a photo about an event held on a certain date.

Fifth, I have been doing this for 32 years. As the owner of magazine publishing companies since 1977 and large networks of web sites since 1994, I know what our needs are and why. I know what works and doesn't work in search engines. I don't do things for the fun of it; I do them for a reason.

Unfortunately, 30 keyword tags is a limitation that I wish you didn't have. I like almost everything about SmugMug, though, and I have promoted you to a lot of folks.

Please realize that there are many photo sites out there, and they all have their idiosyncracies. There are also a wide variety of us as customers and potential customers for you. We all have different needs. Metadata has many uses other than the display on your site.

RoundAmerica · January 9, 2009

SmugMug Can't Handle Dates!

Andy wrote:

Talk about overload.... the date is already in the metadata

Talk about a problem -- SmugMug apparently can't handle dates. Am I wrong, or is the only way to get June 26 2003 as a SmugMug indexed keyword is to enter this as a tag: junetwentysixtwothousandthree?

Andy · January 9, 2009

RoundAmerica wrote:

Talk about a problem -- SmugMug apparently can't handle dates. Am I wrong, or is the only way to get June 26 2003 as a SmugMug indexed keyword is to enter this as a tag: junetwentysixtwothousandthree?

Hi

Like we say here: http://www.smugmug.com/help/keywords-tags

put it in quotes: "June 26 2003"

Example:
http://andytheme.smugmug.com/keyword/june%2026%202003#333237262_uWhkG

RoundAmerica · January 10, 2009

Andy wrote:

Hi Like we say here: http://www.smugmug.com/help/keywords-tags

put it in quotes: "June 26 2003"

Example:
http://andytheme.smugmug.com/keyword/june%2026%202003#333237262_uWhkG

Didn't you call that "overload?"

And if it's my 31st tag, it won't be seen.

I'm sure you understand that the complaint here is that we shouldn't have to change our metadata systems to work with SmugMug. SmugMug should seriously consider changing its system to mirror what Flickr and others provide.

Please consider this.

Thank you.

Andy · January 10, 2009

RoundAmerica wrote:

Didn't you call that "overload?"

I was trying to show you how to add this date as a keyword.

And if it's my 31st tag, it won't be seen.

I'm very sorry that 30 isn't enough for you

caroline · January 10, 2009

RoundAmerica wrote:

SmugMug should seriously consider changing its system to mirror what Flickr and others provide.

Please consider this.

Thank you.

Hi Bill,
I appreciate that your post was a polite request but ..........
presumably you have chosen Smugmug because 'Flickr and others' fall short in some other respects ? The facilities SmugMug provides for a VERY modest fee can't be matched by another other company as far as I have been able to ascertain, so its really a case of 'You pay your money and make your choice' and then work with what you have. No doubt if you really felt your business would suffer as a result of the 30 word limit you would move you images elsewhere.

I really don't mean to offend here but I find it suprising that an established business doesn't research fully what it is buying into. This final comment is not directed solely at you Bill, the situation occurs more frequently than one would expect.

Best wishes,
Caroline

RoundAmerica · January 19, 2009

caroline wrote:

Hi Bill,
I appreciate that your post was a polite request but ..........
presumably you have chosen Smugmug because 'Flickr and others' fall short in some other respects ? The facilities SmugMug provides for a VERY modest fee can't be matched by another other company as far as I have been able to ascertain, so its really a case of 'You pay your money and make your choice' and then work with what you have. No doubt if you really felt your business would suffer as a result of the 30 word limit you would move you images elsewhere.

I really don't mean to offend here but I find it suprising that an established business doesn't research fully what it is buying into. This final comment is not directed solely at you Bill, the situation occurs more frequently than one would expect.

Best wishes,
Caroline

Caroline, I THOUGHT I researched pretty well, but I obviously missed the keyword limit. I never thought I had to research oddities in search functionality. 30 doesn't work for me, and the strange search limitations does not work for me.

Can anyone recommend an alternative to SmugMug that doesn't have these problems?

RoundAmerica · January 19, 2009

Andy,m can you recommend an alternative to SmugMug?

Andy wrote:

I was trying to show you how to add this date as a keyword.
I'm very sorry that 30 isn't enough for you

Andy, as I have said, there is a lot to like about SmugMug, but I am afraid the 30 keyword limit and the oddities of your search functionality make me feel I should look for an alternative. Can you recommend another site?

Thanks.

Mohamed.Ghuloom · July 17, 2009

I just found out there are keyword limits.. Andy like you say: "No limits period"

..

The thing is that using lightroom i add synonyms to people names, different common spellings.. and what i found out that for my latest shot (click here) the name of the artist in the shot has a lot of different spelling people use.

A.Ameer Al-Beladi (that's Arabic of course

)
A.Ameer is the first name
Al-Beladi is the last name

People all over middle-east search his name differently, like:
A.Amir
A.Ameer
Abdul-Ameer
Abdul.Ameer
Abdol.Ameer
Abdul-Ameer

Ohh the list goes on

, i still didn't start with the LAST name

Though in Arabic, it's just one keyword:
"عبدالأمير البلادي"

And unfortunately smugmug doesn't support arabic keywords.

Andy Habibi :P I don't see flickr with that 75 keywords any slow. Can't you make that limit to 50 atleast, and then see what other things you can do to keep smugmug fast?

Or let's keep it like you said "No Limits Period" and then use a kind of keyword spam checker or something? come on im sure you guys can brainstrom something

kny · August 11, 2009

Add me to the list of folks who find the 30 keyword limit restrictive.

I have video files that include hundreds of people over the span of the video. Each of these people should be able to find which video (and pics) they are in by a keyword search on their name.

This is a very restrictive barrier for my application.

iMac · August 11, 2009

It would seem to me that a restriction of keywords kind of defeats the purpose of having keywords period.
Is Smugmug starting to out grow itself to the point that a lot of restrictions are needed to keep the performance level at some standard? If that is the case then I see a huge problem with this practice, and maybe Smugmug needs a complete overhaul.

15 Keywords Limit is a Problem

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