Released: Do You Use It As A Keyword?

A photographer recently called to my attention to a keywording anomaly that those who want their images found might want to consider. The photographer said that when he prepares for a trip to another country he searches some of the popular photo websites for the country name along with the keyword “released.”

The theory is that customers who need model released images might use “released” in their keyword searches. If there aren’t many people images with released as a keyword, it gives him a better idea of what to shoot.

I decided to do a few searches of Getty, Shutterstock (SS), iStock and Alamy for particular countries or cities and the word "people." Then, I added "released" to narrow the same search. The results are very revealing.

	Getty	Getty		SS	SS		iStock	iStock		Alamy	Alamy
	People	People		People	People		People	People		People	People
		Released			Released			Released			Released
Bermuda	674	2		416	0		184	0		1,737	4
Japan	168,479	3		136,732	13		44,915	45		181,401	351
China	170,409	184		407,594	45		75,608	44		312,459	304
India	100,309	127		73,986	34		49,831	51		251,188	540
Israel	9,255	24		17,652	11		5,014	10		42,940	276
London	110,016	249		82,466	18		27,553	27		269,062	458
Berlin	30,100	38		12,961	0		13,784	15		106,803	325
Paris	42,005	55		41,835	14		15,326	2		114,496	146
Turkey	22,029	43		38,544	16		32,757	67		59,787	180
Italy	118,997	216		123,275	143		62,623	82		281,281	2,392
Spain	116,870	369		76,721	19		36,606	42		305,964	784
Mexico	32,015	78		15,273	15		8,245	15		74,565	1,052
Rio de Janeiro	10,526	18		7,626	1		4,472	1		15,996	8

Note that while Getty has many fewer images in its Creative collection than Shutterstock (10 to 12 million vs. over 70 million) it usually has more images on the subjects searched than Shutterstock. It is also very competitive in terms of numbers with Alamy that also has around 70 million images. It is also interesting to compare Alamy with Shutterstock. Both have about the same number of images in their collections, but for these particular searches Alamy tends to have much higher returns.

On Getty, Shutterstock and iStock, if the images have people in them they are supposed to be releases. I suspect that many that are not marked as released do actually have releases. But, the word released was not used as a keyword.



Customers that only want to see released images will have great difficulty in determining whether a particular image is released, or not. On the other hand, it is definitely not safe for the customer to assume that every image of people in the Getty, Shutterstock or iStock collections has an adequate release.

It is also interesting to see the kind of images that are included in the “released” collection. Many have no people in them at all. Thus, it is difficult to see how they come up in a search for people. A number of photographers seem to think that as long as you can’t see a face, then it is OK to mark an image as released. There as shots of large groups of people taken from the rear that are marked released. I also found some pictures of statues that were marked released.



The next time you're keywording it may be useful to add that little word. The photographer who called my attention to this issue says he has “a few images that are consistent sellers” that he attributes to the fact that he has uses "released" as a keyword. Thus, in at least some cases his work is competing against many fewer images.