Tags for icons can be divided into different categories, and each category represents different types of searches. Below are examples of the various types of tags you should try and use to describe your icons.
Nouns
Nouns are by far the most common search term for icons. Noun tags must concretely represent the motif of the icon.
Heart
Multiple nouns
Quite often an icon can represent multiple nouns, which are equally important to different customers.
User, Man, Person
Plural nouns
In general tags are in singular form but, in some cases, the plural form of a tag is the most descriptive.
Users
Cars
Verbs
Some icons represent an action rather than a thing. Dancing, Walking, Talking and Flying are all verbs that can be represented by icons.
Dancing
Walking
Talking
Flying
Imperatives (actions)
Searches for verbs in imperative mood are used a lot in software interface design. Action related icons are often used to describe what happens when users click buttons.
Delete
Download
Abstract Nouns (phenomenons)
Some icons represent a phenomenon. Phenomenons are technically nouns, but represent mostly abstract nouns. Abstract nouns can also be concepts where the understanding of the motif relies of cultural understanding or contextual interpretation.
Abstract icons can include
Security
Power
Love
Traffic
No entry
Some concepts share their descriptive tags with others, making for mixed results. Yet, in high level relevance, all tags are equal. Stop, as an example, can both be used to control a media player as well as a prohibiting a person from entering a room.
Stop
Finally, make sure to avoid non-descriptive and design related tags, unless that's what your icon truly represents. We already have additional filters in place to allow users to search by style. For example, please do not use the following:
icon
icons
svg
png
vector
symbol
glyph
flat
ai
vista
3d
simple
button
handdrawn
pictogram
raw
pixel
perfect
outline
graphic
smooth
photorealistic