Why is searching for stock photos such a pain in the butt!? If a survey was held asking designers and image buyers if they find looking for stock photos frustrating, I think that at least 95 percent would agree. What are some of the reasons for that? Well, first of all, you’re digging through a sea of millions of images, in many of the collections. Credit download and subscription based royalty free stock agencies that used to have 1 million or less are now stocked with anywhere from 10-20 million with some growing as much as 100,000 images each and every week. That makes the selection even more bountiful, but at the same time, there’s a lot more stuff you don’t need to dig through.
Quality is also an issue. You may find overly basic or even poorly edited images mixed in with an assortment of high end, professional ones. On top of all of this, you’re usually working with some pretty tight deadlines on these marketing materials you are trying to design and finalize.
There are some stock sites that yield even more search results when you use more keywords. How frustrating! It makes so sense, at all. Those odd ducks need to fix their algorithms. In my honest and humble opinion, stock agencies should always automatically optimize their search engines so that more words yield more specific results. Less images, not more. The easiest stock agencies to search on, are the ones that already implemented this simple principle in their websites. 
Thankfully the majority of stock agencies will yield a smaller amount of images with more specific keyword combinations, or they will at least have the option to “match all keywords” in your query. Then it just comes down to how well the image you are looking for is keyworded.
That’s the other issue that arises: photographers and image contributors sometimes are too lazy or too sloppy with keywords, using 10-15 generic keywords and leaving out the specifics that designers need to find what they’re looking for quickly (and to weed through the sea of crap they don’t need or want). Image quality control aren’t going to add more words on their own initiative, and they don’t always catch unrelated or spammed words. There could be an incredible photo that you would want to use in your company website, print and hang on your wall, show your friends, or even tattoo all over your forehead; but if that image isn’t keyed properly, you’re never going to be able to even find it. It stinks, but that’s the reality of it. When you go to a shopping mall or department store, the nicest looking products are usually displayed at a level where they are easy to spot. Fancily decorated end caps or attractive point of purchase (POP) displays are used. They don’t hide their best quality items at the top of a shelf in the middle of the store that you can’t even see or reach. Some stores even create paths through the different areas forcing you to have to cut through parts of the store you might not have even intended on browsing. Sites that include more image search results, with the more keywords you type in, seem like they’re trying to do that. Only it’s got FAIL written all over it. Nobody looking for an adjustable torque wrench in SEARS gives a flying crap about buying pink lingerie (maybe a small majority do, but I digress). If I type in “golfer swinging” I don’t want to even see an image of a monkey hanging on a vine, or a guy playing the sport of frolf (frisbee golf).
Searching for stock imagery is never going to be perfect. Some sites have much higher standards than others. There are even sites that regularly audit their collection, removing unnecessary keywords from unrelated images. These types of things help a bit. Overall if you are someone who needs to search through stock for their daily or weekly assignments, it’s pretty inevitable that you’re going to have to strategize your execution of “hunting” for stock. Hopefully you can make it less of a wild goose chase, and more of a quickly executed covert operation. It can sometimes help to use more advanced adjectives or synonyms in your searches, in order to find different images, if using basic words isn’t cutting it. It will also narrow down your search results tremendously. Check out this post to learn some searching tips on finding what you need, so that you can log in, search, find, download, and get gone; onward with your project.
