Keywords: Make it a game
Keywords are important for photographers who want to sell their photos online.
Photo researchers are delighted to know that they can type a phrase like “Crystal Springs Rhododendron Gardens” into a search engine like Google or Yahoo and find out which photographer has the photo. However, photography researchers are working against a basic human problem. How is Google.
And that’s this. Correct and appropriate captioning or labeling of photographs requires hands-on individual effort. Should you use a keyword service? Well, that service will get you halfway up the mountain. After all, keyword services can only provide you with generic tags and phrases, which of course puts you in the supply pool with all the other photographers.
Keyword writing is not a job for a robot. Only the photographer can apply descriptions for a particular image that are complete and specific to that photo.
And here is the problem. Humans can be lazy when it comes to tedious tasks like tagging images. Without incentives, photographers procrastinate when it comes to adding keywords and phrases to their images.
THE INCENTIVE
The photographers soon discover an incentive to tackle this task. The incentive is sales. The photographers selling the images are the ones who invite photo buyers to their websites through the search engine process, that is, they enter enough keywords to attract consistent traffic from buyers. Photographers learn that long keywords (tagging) equal dollars in your pocket.
Google in all its wisdom has figured out another way to tackle the problem. In 2006 he introduced http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/ They are experimenting with the idea that if you play a game with keywords, it can become addictive. His game “Image Labeler” is very similar to “Graffiti on Yahoo Games”.
In fact, Google is harnessing human computing power.
You become a volunteer to help Google increase the abundance of keywords and phrases from image bids in your Google images.
Is that how it works. Every time you sign in, Google finds you a partner and shows you both the same image. (He doesn’t know who his partner is.) You enter as many tags as you can, and when you and your partner enter the same tag, that’s considered a good answer and earns you 100 points. While two people can fail to find a good tag, the probability is much less than for one person. When they both come up with the same label, they will move on to the next image. Continue tagging images for 90 seconds. After the time expires, you receive a score and you can also see where the images came from and what your partner’s tags were. And then you can start over, if you want.
The same images will be shown to other people, so in the end, each Google image will retain only the best tags.
ROBOTS WILL NOT
Google, like us here at Photosource International, has recognized that software programs like Object Recognition (recently acquired by Google), can only go so far in identifying the parts of an image. Human tagging is what’s needed, especially when a photo buyer needs to leverage an unusual image description to complete their design or story.
Try the tag game. You will be randomly matched with a partner who is online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, you and your partner will be shown the same images and asked to provide as many tags as possible to describe each image you see. When your tag matches your partner’s tag, you’ll earn some points and move to the next image, until time runs out. After the time expires, you can browse the images you have viewed and the websites where those images were found. Google will show you the points you have earned throughout the session. No monetary prize awaits you, but if you come out as the top point holder for the week, Google will post your ‘ID’ and your point total.
And if you do get addicted to the game, you would do well to translate some of that enthusiasm into tagging your own photos on your website or on PhotoSourceBANK. Your bookkeeper or accountant will end up praising you for your efforts.