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Participant
February 17, 2025
Question

Why is Stock Adobe search so bad??

  • February 17, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 631 views

Whenever I search for images on this website (E.g Doggy underwater) I get loads of unrelated results or just the keyword shows up and it's soooo annoying! Why do websites have generally bad search functions vs google??

 

[Moderator moved the thread to the correct forum]

3 replies

Participating Frequently
June 10, 2025

W4LK3R 2.0, I have the same problem. I searched for "

mallet" and got a bunch of brush strokes and ink brushes.

Nancy OShea
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 10, 2025

Q: What do mallets, brush swatches and beetles have in common?

A: They appear in Adobe Stock search results: https://stock.adobe.com/search?k=mallet

 

Mallets are sometimes referred to as beetles, so that explains the bug connection. 

 

An AI shape-recognition algorithm likely sees the same shape in brush strokes and mallets.  Probably the same failure-prone AI that Stock is using to weed out "similar content." 

 

The more we lean on AI, I fear this is the quality of results we can expect. Wake me when it's over.

 

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
Participating Frequently
June 11, 2025

I specifically exclude generative AI in my search.
Mallets are beetles? Is Beetle a brand of mallet? Is there a language confusion?
Indeed.

Legend
February 18, 2025

Lots and lots of great images when serching  'Doggy underwater' at Adobe Stock Images.

Nancy OShea
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 17, 2025

This could be due to various reasons.  When all else fails, use Google Search.

 

'Underwater dog' yields these results:

https://stock.adobe.com/search?k=underwater+dog

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
Participant
February 18, 2025

Traditional searches on websites get worse the more bigger numbers you go down the list

Always wondered why

Nancy OShea
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 18, 2025

Turn off your search filters.

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert