Seeing Your Photos in Flickr Searches

While reviewing some of my photos on Flickr, I noticed this message: “Your photos are currently not appearing in public searches. More info”. I was pretty sure that I had no settings to prevent my photos from appearing in searches, so I clicked the more info link.

The link takes you to a page listing reasons why your photos would not appear in searches. Here are the reasons listed:

• New account
• Need at least five photos
• Need tags and descriptions
• Need appropriate safety level set
• Make sure the account is not hidden from search
• Make sure photos are not hidden from search

None of those reasons applied, as far as I could tell. My account has existed since 2009. I have uploaded over 50 photos, although those uploads have been done in the last week or so. My photos have tags and descriptions. My account is not hidden from search, and none of the photos are hidden from search.

So, I sent a support email to Flickr. It turns out you may need to have your account reviewed. I’m not sure if this is something that is done automatically or not. I didn’t see that in the list of things to check for, so it wasn’t apparent that it needed to be done.  Flickr completed the review in about 24 hours, faster than I expected.  After the review was complete, my problem was resolved, and my photos were shown in searches.

If you run into something similar, you may need to request that your account be reviewed. Here is the link: Request a review