Drastic changes to the search algorithm for Graphic Templates

Envato Authors Elements Authors
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I just noticed that there’s been a new update to the search algorithm on elements and I found a couple of issues with it that I’ll list below. I only tested this with the graphic templates category so I don’t know if this extends beyond that.

  1. Search results seem to be more inconsistent and unrelated than those of the previous version.

  • Example 1: When searching for “bookmark mockup” and sorting by popular, one of the top results is actually a lanyard mockup that doesn’t have the “bookmark” keyword anywhere on the item page. Also, when scrolling through the results on the first page, there are lots of books instead of bookmarks and the actual bookmark mockups are pushed to the bottom of the results and many of them on the next page. This issue with the books taking priority also happens on the “relevant” section.

  • Example 2: Searching for “notebook” in the popular section will return the same lanyard mentioned in the previous example among the first results.

  • Example 3: Searching for “flyer mockup” returns a bunch of planes, tickets, and airplane tickets among the first results. The actual flyers are also moved to the bottom or the next page.

  1. The algorithm seems to favor similar looking results instead of variety.
  • Example: Searching for “credit card mockup”, both sorted by relevant or popular, you will find at the bottom of the first page a bunch of credit card mockups made by the same author, all looking incredibly similar, and on page 2 the results are mostly filled with items from the same author, again made in the same style and using the same colors and design.
  1. For some search terms there are very few/almost no differences between relevant and popular results. It’s usually the same products but in a shuffled order.
  • Example: When searching for “water bottle mockup” the first rows of results are identical between popular and relevant.
  1. Before the update, one difference between popular and relevant used to be that the popular section usually only allowed one result per author on the first page. Now, since the change, this doesn’t seem to matter.
    While the change seems great on paper, in practice this inundates the results with multiple products that look similar, tying in with point 2, mentioned above. This seems to also skew the results in favor of authors with huge libraries of similar products, and burying products from newer authors deeper down, making them more difficult to find. Many of my items have been moved to the second page because of this.
  • Example: Searching for “mug mockup” (popular) will now return multiple products from a couple of authors and most of them look like they belong in the same set. Different products are harder to find.
  1. This is more of a nitpick, but I miss the number of results being displayed on search. This was useful as an author to quickly check which search terms needed more products without having to go through the dashboard.

As an author, I am also a bit worried of how these changes will affect earnings and I hope we won’t have a big surprise hit when the May/June earning reports start getting released.

@BenLeong Any thoughts? Are these changes here to stay or is this just a test?

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Thanks for this feedback. I will pass it on to the Search team. I do know our new vector search will be modified and improved on as we go.

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Thanks for forwarding this. Is this some kind of AI search? I was thinking that these results might be due to some machine learning based search.

I am no expert in this field, but my theory is that, if there are some authors that, for a given keyword, have a higher number of products made in a similar style than others, and the algorithm is trained on these images, then the search results will tend to have a heavier bias towards items that resemble the style they were trained on, and the authors with multiple similar-looking products will always be on top, plus results from other authors that resemble that specific style.

Also, using the same placeholder design on a mockup might make the algorithm “think” that this is the right result to show because it recognizes it from its previous training. So if someone makes a new product and slaps on it the same logo, color, and design, it will automatically rank up and its quality becomes irrelevant.

Eg. Search “photo frame mockup” and you’ll notice that most of the results are from a single author, using the same cover image layout.

If I’m right in this regard, then I feel like this discourages variety and we’ll end up with lots of copy cat products.

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Kristin wrote an article about vector search when it launched for photos - Introducing Vector Search for Photos | Author Hub

As mentioned it’s still a work in progress and tweaks and improvements will continue to happen.

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Thanks, I just looked through the article. So does this mean that the search is only concerned with the semantics of the used keywords or is it also trained to recognize the contents of a cover image?

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There will be added improvements hopefully to the point that search will be able to recognize items and classify them accurately. It’s still in the early stages but we’re committed to helping customers find what they’re looking for as easily as possible.

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The new AI search engine started in January 2024 for photos. A lot of Photographers saw an immediate decrease in our sales. It has been learning though. You can see my initial complaints here.

But I just did the same search and the results were better.

image
image1765×846 186 KB

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@alienvalley I don’t have much to add to @KingDog’s posts, but I wanted to thank you for sharing such a phenomenally detailed set of notes! We’ve passed all of these points on to the team that is refining our search platform.

The Graphic Templates category is the latest to start using the new search system. This works by identifying item similarity (“search vectors”), instead of just relying on matching an item title with a keyword search term (“lexical search”). In general, it’s much better at handling more complex search phrases, as we start seeing customers using longer searches to describe what they’re looking for.

We have been progressively rolling out the new search to users, and monitoring the impact of this on customer activity. There will be further updates to address any unusual behaviour, such as the examples you’ve shared above.

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@MargJohnsonVA Thanks for sharing this. I wasn’t aware that the change had already been made to the Photo section. To be honest, it’s a bit disheartening to see that things haven’t improved much since last year, and it makes me question which direction I should take moving forward as an author.

@BenLeong Thank you for passing my feedback to the team. What I would like to add is that these are general issues that extend beyond the aforementioned examples. These are not just a few cases of unusual behavior. Search relevancy, single authors dominating the top results (sometimes with 10 or more items from a single author), and very similar—sometimes identical—results between popular and relevant searches occur when using a variety of search terms.

Regarding your last point, I just tested this, and indeed, more complex phrases return better results than general terms (“flyer mockup” will return planes, but using more specific terms like “A4 flyer mockup” or “paper flyer mockup” will yield more accurate results). However, I feel like both should work properly, and the previous model provided better quality results overall.

A good question would be whether or not customers are using longer phrases as a result of the update, as I worry that some of them might abandon the search if they don’t quickly find what they’re looking for.

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My earnings were cut in half (or a little more) by the switch to the new search engine and have never recovered. It definitely was not a good change for me except to push me to start selling on several other platforms instead of being exclusive. As independent creators, we have to keep shifting and changing and reinventing ourselves as the markets and platforms change. Good luck!

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@MargJohnsonVA I am really sorry to hear about this and I’m hoping for some improvements. Unfortunately for my type of content there aren’t many good alternatives as far as other marketplaces go.

@KingDog @BenLeong I noticed that there have been some improvements regarding the search for “flyer mockup”, which doesn’t seem to return pictures of planes anymore, this is definitely a step in the right direction but the rest of my listed issues still persist, hopefully these will be ironed out in time.

I also think I figured an issue regarding the popular section and why some irrelevant items tend to appear for some search terms. I believe that the new algorithm prioritizes items with the most amount of downloads over relevancy. So, for instance, if you have an item that’s on the main page on the graphic templates category, usually any keyword used in the description or tags section on the respective item’s page will be picked up by algorithm and the item will be pushed to the front, whether or not this is relevant to the search. This can be potentially exploited by authors with one popular item by including irrelevant keywords and ranking in multiple searches.

To illustrate this, and I’m not accusing the author of manipulating the results as I believe this is simply an odd byproduct of the update, I will use the lanyard mentioned in my previous posts as an example, sometimes even with hilarious results.

Some of the tags in the description of this item are: holder, badge, neck.

When searching for holder mockup you will get this on top of the results:

f554569d-fed7-47c0-8f8a-d1cb86ef37f2
f554569d-fed7-47c0-8f8a-d1cb86ef37f22048×434 58.2 KB

Searching for badge mockup will also yield similar results:

badge
badge2359×701 239 KB

And for amusement, I also looked for neckbeard mockup, which, among some pictures of bearded people, I also found the following:

beard
beard2384×999 371 KB

Could you also pass these findings to the team? If they are not yet aware of this, I think they might find this feedback helpful in identifying the root cause of this issue.

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Thanks again for all your feedback. The Dev team really appreciates it. And yes, the flyer issue was one of the first changes they’ve had time to work on. More coming soon! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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There are graphic templates on Shutterstock.