As you all know, searching via keywords is a relatively new skill that everyone is trying hard to develop. Certainly every website has its own version of how to search.

One thing we do daily is study the keyword searches of visitors to our site, in an effort to see how you’re using keywords in your search, as well as to see if you’ve missed anything that we can still help you with.

So, if you get an email from us out of the blue, just know it’s our attempt to help you find what we have on our site. Also, as I edit thousands of jpeg images weekly, I know in my head what we have that’s not yet on the site, and often we can email you jpegs of images in process if it’s something that we feel you’d be interested in.

What we notice most of all, is that almost everyone uses one or two words for their searches. This isn’t always going to get the best results, however. When we first started keywording 3 years ago we used many 2 or 3 word combinations, so a lot of the earlier images might not come up with just one keyword, unless it’s very broad.

One thing I’ve personally found useful in searching is to start with a broad subject search and then “Search Within” to get more specific within that subject. You can also use the “Alaska and bear” type of searching if you know specifically what you want. Just string a couple of words together with “and” and you might get what you’re looking for: “Seattle and Space Needle” or “Chile and glacier”—that kind of searching.

One other note to explain why you might get really odd results on some words: because of early colonial exploration, there are many countries that share similar counties, provinces, states, cities, etc., (thanks to the founding fathers of the country in question), so you might end up with images from New Zealand when you’re searching for something that is in England.

As we refine our keywording, we’re trying to make buzz words associated with a subject and/or place name part of the keywords as well.

It’s all a work in progress and will probably never end, but just know we’re doing our best. If you ever feel that there is content we should have that is not coming up in your searches, feel free to contact us by phone at 425-562-1543 or e-mail at danita@danitadelimont.com