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Thursday, August 19th, 2021 8:01 PM

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Spam & Useless Keywords that Should be Banned

I previously raised most of these keywords in an earlier "question" post. The consensus appears to be that these keywords should be banned.

Accordingly, I propose that the following keywords should be deleted from the IMDb system and permabanned:

Useless/Spam Keywords - Please Delete and Ban

available-on-dvd (222 titles)

available-in-dvd (16 titles)

available-for-viewing (106 titles)

available-for-viewing-worldwide (17 titles)

not-on-blu-ray (27 titles)

not-on-dvd (27 titles)

character (329 titles)

characters (131 titles)

film-released-during-covid-19 (54 titles)

The problems with these keywords should be obvious, especially if you click these links to see how the keywords have been applied. But I will mention a few reasons here.

The "available-for-viewing" and "not-on" keywords are bad because their applicability can change at any time in the future. Keywords that could be temporary should not be used liked this. 

The "available-on-dvd" etc. keywords have been used purely for promotional/spamming purposes by one or more companies specializing in female wrestling content. These keywords also have nothing to do with plots, and keywords should primarily be plot keywords.

The "not-on" keywords have not been kept up to date. Some of those titles have had DVDs available for years.

The "not-on" keywords are also bad because it is never a good idea to start a keyword in the negative sense ("not on"). A keyword should be framed as applying to a title, not framed as not applying to a title.

The "film-released-during-covid-19" keyword is an all-around bad keyword that has not aged well. This keyword might have made sense initially (in early 2020), and it might be a good keyword today if the pandemic had lasted just a few months and had a clear beginning and end point. Unfortunately, the virus has been circulating for at least a year and half, with no end in sight, and will probably be with us for many years to come. The keyword is already somewhat meaningless. Also, the keyword is badly formatted. It should have been something like "film-released-during-covid-19-pandemic." And finally, the keyword has only been applied to 54 titles, even though thousands of titles have been released since late 2019. If anyone really wants to search for films released during this specific time period, there are ways to add that parameter to a search, instead of using this inferior keyword. It is time for this keyword to be killed off.

The "character" keywords are useless. Virtually all titles have one or more characters. Plus, the "character" keyword has also been spammed by the same female wrestling companies.

I cannot discern any redeemable value of any of these keywords. IMDb staff, please delete and ban them.

Accepted Solution

Employee

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3 years ago

Hi keyword_expert -

These keywords have now been removed and blocked.  The changes should be live on the site shortly.

Cheers!

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Awesome, @Michelle! Thank you so much.

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3 years ago

Edited to add "film-released-during-covid-19" to the list.