Lightroom’s Smart Collections don’t handle hierarchical keywords very reliably for this use. If you filter on a child term like “accepted,” Lightroom can also match images from other parent keyword branches.

A partial workaround is to build the Smart Collection to match all conditions, such as:

• keyword contains _shutterstock
• keyword contains _accepted

That may work in some cases because images tagged with the nested child also inherit the parent context, but users report it can still be unreliable.

A more dependable workflow is to avoid generic child terms for this purpose and use unique flat keywords instead, such as:

• shutterstock_accepted
• shutterstock_rejected
• dreamstime_accepted

Then your Smart Collections can match those exact keywords without false positives.

If you want to keep your current hierarchy, another workaround is to combine keywords with a second metadata marker, such as color labels or star ratings, to distinguish accepted/rejected status.