The Picture Archive Council of America will premiere its in-development search engine during its upcoming Miami annual gathering.
PACA-Search will be a new buyer-targeting feature of the PACA Web site. The keyword-based search engine will function across the combined collections of every participating PACA member. Search results will be delivered in two formats: a number of total images matching the keyword at a given agency and a percentage of that agency’s collection devoted to such images. The latter is a unique concept, intended to promote specialist agencies to interested buyers.
The industry group says the new search engine “will be a major benefit of membership and an asset for the entire stock industry.” However, the search engine’s ultimate success will depend on PACA’s ability to generate sufficient buyer interest and on buyers taking to the new search-engine format, which has at least two potentially major conceptual limitations: It is an image search engine that does not return images. It also does not have a transactional backbone, functioning as a referral service that directs buyers to agencies.
PACA-Search creator Doug Dawirs will be in Miami to do a demonstration of PACA-Search and provide information on preparing agency Web sites to work with this new product. The conference will take place on October 16–18.