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Keywords

  • Tracking your contribution

    • Keywords - Overview

    A keyword is a word (or group of connected words) attached to a title (movie / TV series / TV episode) to describe any notable object, concept, style or action that takes place during a title. The main purpose of keywords is to allow visitors to easily search and discover titles.

  • A keyword can be a single word (waterfall) or a phrase with words separated by a dash (world-war-two; running-away-from-home)
  • Keywords should be lower-case


    • Before submitting a new keyword check to see what already exists. A list of the keywords currently being used can be displayed by clicking on the gray list icon ( ) next to the keyword field.

    Unacceptable keywords

  • Plurals Use singular words. For example, trains should be train
  • Episode-specific keywords submitted to the TV series page Keywords submitted to the TV series page should be relevant to and describe the entire series. Keywords that are specific to a particular episode should be added to that episode only.
  • Accented words For example, cafĂ© should be cafe
  • Foreign words Keywords should be in the English language
  • Repeating the title For example adding shawshank-redemption as a keyword to the title Shawshank Redemption. If the movie Shawshank Redemption is mentioned or referred to during a title, you can use the keyword reference-to-shawshank-redemption
  • Repeating genres For example, we have the genres Romance and Drama so you can submit these as genres to the title rather than submitting the keyword romantic-drama. For an exceptional genre on an episode that does not relate to the overall series, please see the -episode special keywords below.
  • Production Company The production company for a title will not be accepted as a keyword (i.e. silverline-productions)
  • Standalone names This includes actors/actresses/crew members/real life people. For example:
    •     marilyn-monroe
    tony-blair
    john-williams
    tom-cruise
    albert-einstein

    Exception: We accept name keywords with a relevant descriptive signifier. Examples:

        reference-to
    parody
    satire
    sketch
    interview

    Examples of these in practice:

        reference-to-marilyn-monroe
    tony-blair-parody
    john-williams-satire
    tom-cruise-sketch
    albert-einstein-interview

    Special keywords

    There are some keywords that trigger specific display functions on the site:

  • reenactment Used for a Documentary so that actors portraying people are not listed as 'Self'
  • non-fiction Used for a non-Documentary title, like a Talk-Show, to indicate that the people are portraying themselves
  • tv-special Affects the display of a title; it will say 'TV special' instead of 'TV movie' at the top of the page. Also acts like the non-fiction keyword
  • tv-mini-series Affects the display of a title; it will say 'TV miniseries' instead of 'TV series' at the top of the page
  • hardcore | sex These two keywords, combined with the Adult genre, will restrict the display of a title to those people who have chosen to see adult titles
  • -character Used to denote a character's appearance in a title. The formatting should be presented as the name of the character first, followed by "-character". So, for Star Wars, we'd list Han Solo as "Han-Solo-character". This can be used for both fictional characters, and fictional portrayals of real life people (including when someone is playing a fictionalized, scripted portrayal of themselves). Please note that if the character is recurring in a series the character keyword should only be added to the parent and not individual episodes.

    • There are some keywords that have a specific meaning:

  • f-rated Used for any title which is either directed by a woman and/or written by a woman
  • triple-f-rated Used for any title which is directed by a woman, written by a woman and features significant women on screen in their own right
  • -episode Used on an episode of a series to assign a genre where that particular episode is "out of the ordinary" and is unlike most others in the series i.e. "musical-episode" on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More, with Feeling. Especially useful for anthology series.

    • Duplicate Keywords

    To report a duplicate keyword please go to our contact form and select IMDb Fan/Contributor questions > Titles > Other title issues followed by E-mail including the details of the keywords you think should be combined.

    Tracking your contribution


    You can now track the status of your Keywords submission and if it has not been approved, we'll tell you the reason why.

    If you are using the mobile apps, mobile website or desktop website you can access this feature via the 'Track your contribution' button, which has been added to the submission email receipt. Additionally, if you are using the desktop website, you can also use the 'Track Contribution' button now found in your contribution history page.

    Clicking this button will take you to IMDb Contributor, our new contribution specific site where you will be shown the status of your request.



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