Pond5 Public Domain Project

It's not a search issue, I just hadn't considered the possibility of 4K Public Domain footage. I think it's great that some of this stuff is being scanned at 4K. That'll make it all the more useful.

Hang-em ;)

Just want to add that I am 100% in favor that PD stuff should be in a separate search engine. I know PD is attractive to buyers, new and old, but you do not want it to reduce sales or make a search of a buyer more cumbersome since he has to dig deeper for what he wants.

I think that if Pond5 is using the Public Domain stuff to try and attract customers to buy the Royalty Free footage then the customer should actually not have the option to filter out the RF footage.

Mix it all together and throw it to the client so that there is maximum exposure to the stuff that P5 really wants the client to look at (you know - the stuff that actually pays).

In reality, a determined "client" could quite easily just simply download every PD clip that P5 has to offer because of the ability to filter the search results. Then he just walks away and doesn't even say "You guys are great and thanks for the hard work P5", as he adds them to his own database. The other agencies would be stupid not to do something like this.

The way that it is set up now there is no way to expose the client to the footage that P5 and the contributors are getting paid for.

Make it work for you. Tell the client it is there but they have to look for it. A bit like AdSense mixed in with Google search results.

Then by that reasoning mix RF into the PD searches also?

Yes, of course... Everything together... Make it so that a client can't not include the results of the other.

The cat is out of the bag on this and there is no getting it back in there. If I were a competing agency I'd download every PD video I could off of P5 and then I'd hire some cheap workers off of Elance or something and get them to keyword it all just to level the playing field a little bit.

In a legal sense I doubt there'd be anything that P5 could do about it either. Sort of makes me wonder what Jonathan was talking about when he says people who have more years of experience than he is old have thought this through.

So basically it's just a matter of how does P5 fix the situation to make it work best for P5 (and us).

Well cactil, let me have the freedom to disagree. If you search for "pilot" why do so many PD clips appear in the 1st search page? Why does Mr. Algorithm in place them as first choices when clips from artist have been online and sold for years? Now a clip that previously was within the first choices maybe set back 5 or more pages down.

Well this must be a P5 search engine error. The search engine defaults to ordering by SALES in descending order - so why ANY of the Public Domain stuff shows up in the first few results must be due to a flaw in the search algorithm.

I think most if not all will agree that PD needs to be by it's self and not mix the results. That's the great thing about the forum ... we can disagree and keep it friendly and not personal ....

In any way, my friendly disagree is that i see no marketing sense in the PD project. Of course, it's nice and charming, but i'm sure more customers will use PD clips now instead of paying much money for several clips they need for a project. Don't believe that PD generate new sales!
Why make it so easy to undermine our business?