Poor search results for simple searches

[Peter Grecco]

So... I did a search for one simple word "landfill". Here are the results on page one of Shutterstock search results vs Adobe Stock. Shutterstock returned consistently relevant results, whereas Adobe Stock returned a bunch of random stuff – starting on the first page of results! This has been an annoyance for years and, as illustrated by this particular search word, it's not a matter of narrowing things down with filters.  I guess my suggestion is for Adobe to: a) review keywords regularly and/or apply more scrutiny to submissions, and; b) perhaps create something like a hierarchy for keywords, where the content submitter can put primary keywords for the obvious content of the image, then secondary keywords for any tangiential matches. Or something. I don't know. That's Adobe Stock's job to figure out. Not sure how it works now, but it's clearly not very good and competitors are doing a significantly better job. It's frustrating that this consistently makes my projects take much longer than necessary.

[Abambo]

Let's agree, that this looks more like a bug than a feature request.

[joon.Stock]

I did search with "landfill" for vectors in Stock, I get the following.  And I see the following, are there any other filters applied?

[Peter Grecco]

You may be able to see from my screenshot that I had "vectors" selected, but that's pretty much it. And yes, you're gong to get some relevant results, otherwise, it would be completely unusable. But you don't have to scroll far to find very non-relevant results. Stark contrast to Shutterstock results. This was just one example search word. I find this to be a persistent problem.

[joon.Stock]

Understood the issue, I will pass this symptom to product owner to review.

Best regards,

[markbarnard]

Any update on this from the product owner? My experience mirrors Peter's: search results of late are generally wide of the mark. The first few results are often irrelevant and things get worse from there. I'm increasingly having to search in Bing or similar, then drop an image in to Adobe Stock to do a visual search.

[Peter Grecco]

Another day, another poor search result. This time, I clicked "Vectors" and searched "waterfall". Five of the top 20 images were relevant. And it got worse from there. And I agree with @Abambo , it could be more of a bug than a feature request. When I initially posted, I was thinking that a whole new approach to the search engine would be welcome, but I guess it should be seen as a bug because the current system at least needs fixing, if not replacing. Either way, it's a slog to find relevant images. Clearly, it's pulling out the word "fall" from "waterfall" in this case. But why the Chinese dragon? Who knows.

[joon.Stock]

Noticed the difference when tried the same search in different region, I passed along the difference to product owner.

Best regards,

[ernie@neotech]

I don't have anything helpful to add, but I want to reinforce how bad the search engine is. Horrible. 

[Abambo]

ernie@neotech ,

Upvote the bug report.

[Lynn Mackey]

Agreed. I can find images soooo much faster on Shutterstock, iStock, Getty - anywhere! My main client only has Adobe Stock, so I waste hours looking for good images for them.

[Abambo]

@Lynn Mackey,

Upvote!

[Peter Grecco]

More than a year later and here's the search result I get when I search "appliance" and turn on "include people". This is the top of the results and 1/3 do not have any people in the photo, and nearly half don't have a discernible relation to the word "appliance". It doesn't really get better as you scroll down either. I guess my question is... will Adobe be working to improve their search functionality and keywords or not? Just want to know if I should get my hopes up. I'm a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, so I know what it's like to hold out hope while at the same time knowing it's never going to happen. Thanks.

[Peter Grecco]

Wow! Yet another year has passed and things haven't much improved with Adobe Stock search results. I just searched the term "garbage dump" with vectors selected and "exclude AI". Here's a screenshot of what I get on PAGE 1 of the search results. Out of 100 photos, only 66 have anything related to the keywords. Inexplicably, 31 of them are lightbulbs/tips and the other 3 are random – a page layout template, some kind of medical implement, and an iceberg? I really cannot think of any way that "lightbulb" and "quick tips" can share any keyword with "garbage" or dump" to warrant 31% of the results. It would be comical at this point if it wasn't wasting so much of my time. They charge my credit card with great efficiency, so I guess there's no problem there. Unless Adobe can offer any sort of assurance that they plan to fix their search engine, I think it's past time I spend my money on a better service.