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FAQ for Search Results
Q. Why are some tracks consistently appearing at the top of search results?
A. When a search is run on the site, the search results include essentially two different types of content. At the top of search results is content that is paid to be featured via track campaigns, paid for by vendors. Following this is content that is not paid to be featured, known as "organic" search results.
Featured Content
Featured Content is Pay-Per-Click - If a vendor or artist is using our track campaign service to feature one or more of their tracks, and their tracks include the specific keywords or other settings that you are searching for, then their track will come up in one of the featured positions at the top of the page of search results. A maximum of ten tracks will only ever be displayed in the featured positions. Any time a site visitor clicks on one of these tracks in a featured position, the artist or vendor gets charged a small amount for this, based on whatever amount they bid for their track to appear in that featured position. The higher their bid, the higher in the featured search results their track will appear.
Highest Chance of Getting Licensed - Tracks displayed in the featured content position have the highest chance of making a sale because sound editors and all clients in general are in a hurry and don't have time to listen to lots and lots of tracks. They want to quickly find a track that will work and then they will purchase it and download it and go. Since featured content is displayed at the top of search results, clients naturally listen to those tracks first, before listening to tracks in the organic search results.
Organic Search Results Following the display of any featured content, the organic search results appear. The tracks in this section are sorted first and foremost based on the relevant text that has been searched for. If a track has the exact keyword phrase that was searched for as its title, it will appear at the top of the search results. Following this, other tracks will be displayed that include the searched-for keyword phrase anywhere in their description, keywords, lyrics, etc.
The order of the search results are then otherwise controlled by the selected sort order: - Best Selling - This shows tracks that have a better sales history based on their time on site above tracks that have a worse sales history.
- Artist Choice - Depending on how you and other artists have sorted their tracks with the customized sort feature on your artist profile page, tracks that artists have selected to be higher in their list will appear higher in search results than for other tracks.
- Recently Added - This will display tracks that have been recently added to the site above tracks that were uploaded at an earlier time. This sort option lets our clients find the newest tracks uploaded to the site for any particular genre or other search criteria.
- Best Potential - This shows tracks from top-selling artists above tracks from lesser-selling artists. This is useful for clients when they want to find tracks that may be new on the site and have no sales yet, but are from artists that have a good track record here, meaning that, in general, their tracks have good potential. For new artists with no sales history, this sort method will display your tracks below tracks from other artists that already have sales.
- Random - Tracks are displayed in a totally random order. This is useful for clients to discover new content irrespective of whether an artist or track has any sales history or not. The random "seed" is regenerated on a daily basis so the random order will change each day. We handle it this way so that a client can re-find a track in which they are interested in the same search results order if they happen to re-run the search again during the same day.
Q. What can I do to make my tracks appear higher in search results?
A. If you feel that your tracks are not being well-served by the search results display techniques described above, there are things you can do to change the situation:
- Utilize our Track Campaign services to force your tracks to appear at the top of relevant search results. To learn more about these services, please see these articles: Track Campaigns - Frequently Asked Questions and Track Campaigns - How To Use Them For On-Site Promotions.
- Change your track's titles to include the relevant keywords. For instance, if your track is called "Unquenchable Thirst", by changing it to "Unquenchable Thirst for Coldplay" or "Unquenchable Coldplay" will make it come up much higher for any search for the word "coldplay".
- Adjust your tracks' descriptions and keywords fields to include the most relevant keywords possible for each of your songs. The operative and essential word here is "relevant"! To maximize the performance of each of your tracks it is absolutely critical that you configure a RELEVANT description and keywords for each track. Do not include keywords that do not fit or are irrelevant in any tracks description and keywords fields - if you ignore this and include irrelevant keywords, then your track will come up in the wrong searches, causing our clients to have to wade through your "wrong" tracks to find the "right" tracks. This hurts the site, wastes our client's time, and ultimately hurts you as well. And worse, if you use our Track Campaign services, then your tracks will still come up under the wrong searches and will cost you money as clients click on your tracks to listen to them from a pay-to-be-featured position.
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