Search in Smugmug

photosbygerryphotosbygerry Registered Users Posts: 36 Big grins
edited April 21, 2015 in SmugMug Support
In my Smugmug site (photosbygerry.smugmug.com) I have many galleries of volleyball, several of fireworks, one of cars, several of places, etc. All photos in these galleries have keywords (eg volleyball, fireworks) and all galleries also have keywords (eg volleyball, fireworks). My profile also has keywords (eg volleyball, fireworks). Most also have a location keyword, eg Canberra.

If I do a search from http://www.smugmug.com/search/ for photos, using keywords "volleyball Canberra" with default sorting of Photorank (but I can change the sort to oldest or newest) it returns many of my photos.

If I do the identical search but select Galleries instead of photos it finds 58 galleries, again with a default sort of Photorank. Problem is that I cannot find any explanation of what a gallery Photorank means.

If I do the identical search but select People instead of photos. It finds 0 people! Why did it not find me?

Similarly, a search for galleries with keywords "fireworks Canberra" finds 8 galleries, 5 of which are mine. But a search for People with the same keywords again finds 0 people!

And again, a search for galleries with keyword "fireworks" finds many, some of which are mine. And a search for people with this keyword finds 69 people, none of which are me! Not only that, some do not even seem to have any photos with fireworks! And there appears to be no particular sort order for the people listed (at least its not alphabetical).

So I tried the same thing but searching for the keyword "volleyball". Lots of photos (1.3M) probably some of mine are there, but some of the photos are not of volleyball eg dragonfly, sunflower, etc. Clicking on some to see their keywords (eg the sunflower) does not show "volleyball" listed.

A serach for volleyball galleries returns some 35,000 galleries. Most seem to be of volleyball and some are mine. A search for volleyball people shows 260 people again in seemingly random order and again none of them are me!

A search for people with the keyword "photosbygerry" returns 13 people, me first but called "Gerry" followed by many similar sounding names (eg photosbyjerri, photosbyterry, gary etc.) which is understandable. But also returning "Fitzinger", "Feitzinger" and "Sherry Uyematsu".

Can anyone explain please. Also, is there anything I should be doing that I have not yet done to ensure that a people search can find me?

Gerry
Gerry

photosbygerry.smugmug.com

Comments

  • photosbygerryphotosbygerry Registered Users Posts: 36 Big grins
    edited April 17, 2015
    Can anybody help with the above?
    Or should I email this to the Smugmug heroes for help?
    Gerry

    photosbygerry.smugmug.com
  • Lille UlvenLille Ulven Registered Users Posts: 567 Major grins
    edited April 17, 2015
    If I do the identical search but select People instead of photos. It finds 0 people! Why did it not find me?
    (keywords Volleyball & Canberra)

    You will not find anything when you select people for the keywords Volleyball and Canberra unless you'll find a photographer actually calling himself Volleyball or Canberra (or something in combination with either the two of them).
    So while searching for galleries and photos you could add your name as a keyword to find say all photos of Volleyball in Canberra published by you.
    But when you search for people it really looks for usernames and "real names" in the settings of smug mug and so since you won't have added Volleyball Canberra as part of your real name it won't find you.

    You'll find Fitzinger when looking for photosbygerry because he has a site FitzPhotos (or the username fitzPhotos).

    From what I can see, I assume the search is somewhat of a fuzzy-search allowing for typos in the search keywords in some cases. So say you would be looking for Moonshine Road, you'd possibly get the same results if you typed "Moonshine Road" or "Moonshine Rd" or possibly even "Moonshinerd"

    Good luck

    Lille Ulven
    https://www.lilleulven.smugmug.com - The Photos of my travels
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,220 moderator
    edited April 18, 2015
    If I do a search from http://www.smugmug.com/search/ for photos, using keywords "volleyball Canberra" with default sorting of Photorank (but I can change the sort to oldest or newest) it returns many of my photos
    ....
    Can anyone explain please. Also, is there anything I should be doing that I have not yet done to ensure that a people search can find me?
    Do you really expect people to be searching within smugmug? I would think you want to focus on results from search engines if you want to be found.

    Make sure that your Site Visibility settings are set to allow you to be found. See http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93329.

    Your site name is unfortunately not unique. If I search on Google for "photosbygerry" your smug site is the first result. That's good. But the second site shown uses photosbygerry as the base of a custom URL. I wouldn't necessarily expect people to search for "photosbygerry" - I think they would more likely be using searches like "photography volleyball canberra". If they are looking for you by name I think they would search on your actual name, not your smug URL.

    You have good use of keywords on your site. That should help, but I don't see much in the way of additional text on your site - and search engines like text. You might consider adding an about page, adding gallery descriptions, and adding text in Account Settings... Discovery... Search.

    Another thing that helps is inbound links to your site. Do you have a blog? Does it use your photos and link back to your smug site? If you do have a blog, consider adding a link to your smug site menu. If you don't have one, consider starting a blog.

    Some of your galleries allow access to the Original image. Are you aware that by allowing access to the Original images in your galleries you have enabled downloads of your photos for free? You should set the largest display size in your galleries to a size other than Original. See http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1230107-how-can-i-protect-my-images-.

    --- Denise
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,220 moderator
    edited April 18, 2015
    This help page provides a good summary on improving search engine optimization for your smug site - http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1229846-how-do-i-make-my-site-seo-friendly-.

    --- Denise
  • photosbygerryphotosbygerry Registered Users Posts: 36 Big grins
    edited April 21, 2015
    (keywords Volleyball & Canberra)

    You will not find anything when you select people for the keywords Volleyball and Canberra unless you'll find a photographer actually calling himself Volleyball or Canberra (or something in combination with either the two of them).
    So while searching for galleries and photos you could add your name as a keyword to find say all photos of Volleyball in Canberra published by you.
    But when you search for people it really looks for usernames and "real names" in the settings of smug mug and so since you won't have added Volleyball Canberra as part of your real name it won't find you.

    You'll find Fitzinger when looking for photosbygerry because he has a site FitzPhotos (or the username fitzPhotos).

    From what I can see, I assume the search is somewhat of a fuzzy-search allowing for typos in the search keywords in some cases. So say you would be looking for Moonshine Road, you'd possibly get the same results if you typed "Moonshine Road" or "Moonshine Rd" or possibly even "Moonshinerd"

    Good luck

    Lille Ulven

    Thanks for your comments Lille. I think you are correct about the fuzzy search.

    In regards to finding people, I have investigated a bit further and have found that it will find people based on the text in their profile descriptions. I had previously mistakenly thought that it used the Homepage meta keywords in the Account Settings. Anyway, in my profile description I had the words "volleyball" "cycling" "basketball" . A people search using these terms did/does find me. I did not have the words "Canberra" "Australia", so a people search including these terms would not find me (soon to be corrected).

    When I did my previous testing I was caught out by the dynamic page loading of the search results, which seem to require scrolling down to get the full page to load. I used the browser page search to find "Gerry" and this only worked if the part of the page containing "Gerry" had already been loaded.
    Gerry

    photosbygerry.smugmug.com
  • photosbygerryphotosbygerry Registered Users Posts: 36 Big grins
    edited April 21, 2015
    Do you really expect people to be searching within smugmug? I would think you want to focus on results from search engines if you want to be found.

    Make sure that your Site Visibility settings are set to allow you to be found. See http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93329.

    Your site name is unfortunately not unique. If I search on Google for "photosbygerry" your smug site is the first result. That's good. But the second site shown uses photosbygerry as the base of a custom URL. I wouldn't necessarily expect people to search for "photosbygerry" - I think they would more likely be using searches like "photography volleyball canberra". If they are looking for you by name I think they would search on your actual name, not your smug URL.

    You have good use of keywords on your site. That should help, but I don't see much in the way of additional text on your site - and search engines like text. You might consider adding an about page, adding gallery descriptions, and adding text in Account Settings... Discovery... Search.

    Another thing that helps is inbound links to your site. Do you have a blog? Does it use your photos and link back to your smug site? If you do have a blog, consider adding a link to your smug site menu. If you don't have one, consider starting a blog.

    Some of your galleries allow access to the Original image. Are you aware that by allowing access to the Original images in your galleries you have enabled downloads of your photos for free? You should set the largest display size in your galleries to a size other than Original. See http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1230107-how-can-i-protect-my-images-.

    --- Denise

    Many thanks for your comments Denise.

    I thought some people may use the Smugmug search (if they could find it) since the name Smugmug is not so well known by the people I tell about my site, and I thought it was more likely that they remembered it than the full name of my site. But my query was also for my own benefit since I am interested in seeing other sites on Smugmug and their owners.

    I did spend some time making sure that I have site visibility and have added suitable keywords to all photos and galleries. I have made very little use of photo captions but each gallery has a short description (usally time location and event details). I did not realise that somewhere I had lost my About page and will fix that. I do have keywords in the site meta data under Account Settings but will reviews those too.

    I discovered that photosbygerry was not unique after I had it setup. I will leave it for the time being but may have to revisit it.

    Currently I am on Facebook, but only ever go there to inform local volleyball people and friends that I have uploaded a new gallery (not a fan of fb). I have no other blog as yet, but have been considering the possibility. I have cross referenced photosbygerry a few times when posting images to Nikonians and DPReview. I advise people I speak to to use the RSS feeds to get updates.

    I made conscious decisions about whether to allow original image sizes or not on a gallery by gallery basis. My general approach has been to allow them for galleries covering amateur sport and not the other ones. I am currently on the power user plan. I might revisit these soon.
    Gerry

    photosbygerry.smugmug.com
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