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Known Participant
April 17, 2026
Question

Why is there poor quality control for keywords attributed to an image in Adobe Stock?

  • April 17, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 6 views

I just came across an image (535300163) that has multiple conflicting keywords – alberta, british columbia, manitoba, lake ontario. It’s a photo of a neighborhood of houses, presumably in one of these very different places. So which province is it? It makes no sense. My search was for a specific city in Ontario.

Is it the Submitting Photographer making bad choices with keywords? Is it a Reviewer doing a terrible job – whether human or (more likely) robot? 

The problem of bad search results has been persistent with Adobe Stock. I guess my question is (again), why is there such bad quality control, Adobe? 

Or perhaps my question should be… What has taken me so long to switch to a competitor for my stock needs? At this point, it’s clear you’re not going to fix your search results. But you are good at raising the subscription price!

    2 replies

    Jill_C
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    April 17, 2026

    There is no way for the Adobe Stock reviewers to know if the keywords submitted by the Contributor are accurate when it comes to locations. I suppose at some future point, GPS exif data can be used to verify location, however there are hundreds of millions of legacy images in the Adobe Stock database. I’m not sure you’ll have a better experience at another stock agency because they are dependent on the honesty and thoroughness of the contributor. It’s a case of “Buyer Beware” when licensing such images.  

    Jill C., Forum Volunteer
    Nancy OShea
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    April 17, 2026

    Poor Contributor keyword choices. The Contributor likely used an inferior Keyword Generator to save time.

     

    Stock receives thousands of submissions per week. Not hundreds, thousands.

    Reviewers are human. They do the best they can with the limited time available to examine each asset.

    The team evaluates content based on several criteria, including: 

    • Legal standards
    • Technical qualities
    • Title and keyword accuracy 
    • Commercial value
    • Aesthetic properties
    • Uniqueness

    Given the volume that Stock handles, (over 800 million assets), I expect some mistakes to slip through. It comes with the territory. 

     

    Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert