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Mastering Pinterest SEO: An insider's guide

124 points by jmilinovich 6y ago

coding123 6y ago
Pinterest and GIS (Google Image Search) are so bad now. I find things in GIS and click on it, and it opens pinterest. And then when I'm in Pinterest I click on the image again because I'm trying to track down the original place the image came from, and when I click on it, it literally LOADS a Google Image Search Result page. For Google to reward this behavior must mean they no longer have anyone actually updating GIS anymore. It's probably in permafrost maintenance mode.
dmitrygr 6y ago
Message to pinterest: Please stop ruining google image search. Please. Just stop
- jmilinovich 6y ago
  Pinterest is definitely an expert level content farm. For Google Image Search in particular, you're right that it does create a bit of a broken end user experience that feels a bit misleading. It's surprising that Google hasn't cracked down on this yet or dealt with the obvious dupes problem (showing image result from Pinterest that came from website a vs showing result from website a).
- nraynaud 6y ago
  And google search. I was googling around to try to understand how a trailer suspension is designed, and I had pinterest on the first page. Do people actually buy their engineering explanations from Pinterest?
  - jmilinovich 6y ago
    Pinterest <3's the longtail :) I'd imagine they have some good diagrams of trailer suspension designs, but almost certainly not as good as a solid YouTube video or blog post..
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  even without pinterest, G search is dysfunctional with its side pane. Yandex is better
  - bserge 6y ago
    Yandex seemed to skew towards non-US/English resources (in Europe, tbf), which could be a good thing depending on what you're looking for. I just tried it again and I have to say I'm impressed by the results. It's like an earlier Google. I tried a few searches that made me rage on Google (dnsmasq, HP/Win10 and ACPI, Openwrt and TomatoUSB related) and Yandex actually shows some decent stuff. Like holy hell, Google tried very hard to show trash from the biggest websites like Youtube (of course), Microsoft (fuck their answers forums, honestly), HP (ditto), Reddit (actually useful), the usual. Even Github is lower in the rankings. Bing is slightly better, but not by much. Yandex shows some useful links I haven't come across. Very interesting, I need to remember to use it more.
    - DanBC 6y ago
      Yandex is particularly good at finding people, especially if you work out the crop tool.
- recursive 6y ago
  You should re-address your message to google.
mobilio 6y ago
Probably Pinterest is preparing to be acquired. That's why their SEO strategy is perfect!
diveanon 6y ago
I honestly do not understand why google allows pinterest to wreck their image search. I'm sure there is some sort of ad kick back, but it is just awful. Its one of the main reasons I switched to duckduckgo as my default search.
- nvrGiveUp 6y ago
  I am not convinced it's "SEO" or plenty of other small companies with perfect SEO would be similarly high. Over the years Google has gotten especially questionable in various content it recommends, and as an opposite, hiding wikipedia from results unless specifically adding wiki.
- bombcar 6y ago
  Any GIS result that’s from Pinterest - I have NEVER been able to find the image shown in the preview on the resultant page.
- wmeredith 6y ago
  Is there a way to just block a domain from my search results? I swear I used to be able to do this.
  - fatbird 6y ago
    Per search, if you preface the site operator with - (e.g., -site:pinterest.com), it'll exclude that site. It doesn't help much because pinterest results pollute from multiple top level country domains.
    - mkr-hn 6y ago
      Try -inurl:pinterest
    - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
      `-site:domain.*` works to exclude all country codes.
  - tesseract 6y ago
keyle 6y ago
For the sake of SEO, Pinterest needs to go.
- diveanon 6y ago
  The most effective form of SEO these days is paying for ads.
LordAtlas 6y ago
Pinterest is a cancer in the world of useful content. It's bad enough that they've destroyed Google image search, but now I see results from them bleeding on to regular search as well, which boggles my mind because Pinterest just links to other sites (while making it next to impossible to find the actual site.) I hate Pinterest so much that I've set up a keyword shortcut in Chrome search for image search that adds "-site:pinterest.com" automatically when searching.
- easytiger 6y ago
  My now wife was using Pinterest as a kind of memo board for preparations for our wedding. I signed up and even after a month the UI flow was so incomprehensible I had no idea how it was supposed to work. Achieving basic tasks was beyond me. Yet lots of people with non tech brains seemed to just accept it's imperfections and inherently unpredictable UI as normal for modern technology.
  - elcomet 6y ago
    I think there's a disconnection between tech people and other people. I know plenty of non tech people which are perfectly happy with pinterest, looking for cooking recipe or DIY ideas there and pinterest gives them perfectly what they're looking for. They don't care about it's impact on google search or other tech stuff.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    It's just visual bookmarking, with the addition of your bookmarks being categorised how you like and publicly visible. You sign up for pinterest. You create a couple of different boards. You install the pinterest extension. Now when you browse the internet and you see an image you like you clicky the browser button (from the extension) and select what board of yours you want it to go to. Or you can visit Pinterest and search for a thing, and browse the results, and then save some of those things to your boards. Other people searching Google or Pinterest for a thing may be shown a link to your Pinterest board, and that link will include a link to your profile and your boards. I agree the UI sucks, but all UI sucks. Pinterest's sucky UI isn't particularly worse than all the others.
solarkraft 6y ago
Pinterest is honestly a relatively fine platform with interesting and well thought out apps (can't say that about some of the major players). It just hurts that they keep spamming search results. You'd think at this point it would do more to hurt their brand than help it. If they had the simplest tool to help tracking down an image's source at least they would provide any value.
deleted 6y ago
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cookiengineer 6y ago
What I don't understand is why pinterest can survive in a world of DMCA takedowns. I mean, their whole business model is stealing content they don't own.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- esperent 6y ago
  I guess there's no big organisation fighting image copyright the way there is with film or music.
  - hetspookjee 6y ago
    I believe Getty images is quite large in owning the image copyright space and is also pretty aggresive in enforcing.
    - dazc 6y ago
      Getty are quite successful at pursuing the little guy via aggressive emails and sock-puppet forum accounts. Maybe not so effective against the big guy with lawyers on the payroll?
- m0llusk 6y ago
  Their business model is connecting buyers with products and they are making bank which gives them strong influence.
deleted 6y ago
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nbzso 6y ago
I am just waiting for the (moment of true) to hit us all. After 20 years of advancements in web technology we are an inch from making it useful only for ad companies and consumer driven behaviour. Is usenet valuable alternative for filtering out tons of crap pushed by ad empires ?
- echelon 6y ago
  Google has never felt more ripe for disruption. Their main product is utter trash and the DOJ is actively seeking to decouple their moat. If you use Google search, you're admitting that you want ads. Google rearranges the results to prefer AMP and other ad infested properties before relevant results. The internal Google culture is fucked. They launch random things and close them, all to feed their chaotic promo cycle. It leads to distrust and anger amongst users. I'm still furious about Google Play Music going away. YouTube music recently put this [1] in my indie music playlist. Their current CEO reminds me of Ballmer. They need to bring in a Nadella to save things and make Google cool again. Also, when's the last time we heard from Page, Brin, or Schmidt? I thought they cared more. FWIW, I've started using Bing and I've been quite happy with it. > After 20 years of advancements in web technology we are an inch from making it useful only for ad companies and consumer driven behaviour. Is usenet valuable alternative for filtering out tons of crap pushed by ad empires ? Google is responsible for the web atrophying. Once Google and Facebook have been chastised by the DOJ, we might see a return to form for the web. If not, maybe we should start building more distributed / p2p content distribution. How difficult would it be to design semantic markup for blogs and comments, and start "torrenting" news articles in a web of trust? Signal to noise ratio would skyrocket. This sort of design keeps the marketers out completely. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxp8qPEwSXM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxp8qPEwSXM (decidedly not indie or alt rock music)
  - nbzso 6y ago
    Bing has undoubtedly the best image search. I don't think Google will be able to be cool again. This concept of coolness was fake from the get go. I keep hearing about the decentralisation of internet, but so far nothing is happening on a big scale to give an alternative.
young_unixer 6y ago
Alternative title: How to make people waste time when they're using Google Images.
dougunplugged 6y ago
What John says in this post about "Pinterest as a source of inbound links" is false. Pinterest uses rel="nofollow" on external links, which severs any value the links have for SEO. For example: Pin collection page: <a class="GestaltTouchableFocus" href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/83131400/ornaments-pine-cone-gnomes-elves-set-of?ref=sr_gallery_5&ga_search_query=ornaments&ga_order=most_relevant&ga_ship_to=US&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_facet=handmade&epik=dj0yJnU9ZzlQMjJYUEJEZXc2MF9haHRxUk8tRFBjVHIzVjdlbUomcD0wJm49Sk1GUUtISnJzR3hPVXhBRXRFWF9iUSZ0PUFBQUFBRi1LS1NF https://www.etsy.com/listing/83131400/ornaments-pine-cone-gn..." rel="nofollow" Pin detail page: <a class="linkModuleActionButton" href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/83131400/ornaments-pine-cone-gnomes-elves-set-of?ref=sr_gallery_5&ga_search_query=ornaments&ga_order=most_relevant&ga_ship_to=US&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_facet=handmade&epik=dj0yJnU9ZzlQMjJYUEJEZXc2MF9haHRxUk8tRFBjVHIzVjdlbUomcD0wJm49Sk1GUUtISnJzR3hPVXhBRXRFWF9iUSZ0PUFBQUFBRi1LS1NF https://www.etsy.com/listing/83131400/ornaments-pine-cone-gn..." rel="nofollow"> You aren't going to improve your SEO by being on Pinterest, at least by getting links from Pinterest. It's possible someone else sees your site from browsing Pinterest and then links to it from their site.
- bserge 6y ago
  Last time I was into SEO, the big "experts" seemed to agree that even nofollow links are useful for ranking. Now I'm not sure if it was just more bullshit (the industry is full of it), although it makes sense that with how widespread nofollow is these days, Google might have no choice but to take them into account. Otherwise they'd have to ignore like half the Web.
  - rchaud 6y ago
    That's correct. If Google treated every Twitter/FB/Reddit link as useless just because those sites attach 'nofollow' to every external link, it would have a much worse idea of what links are relevant and what's not. Nofollow is still useful for site owners that are using it as intended, and not as a site-wide policy. It's just that most sites do not get a fraction of the traffic a big tweet or Reddit post would get.
- 6y ago
blackrock 6y ago
To be honest, I think Google and search engines should delist Pinterest pictures from their image search. And from all search in general. Why? Because their data is not really usable. To even view it, Pinterest forces you to log in. Why must I log in? If your data is not meant for the internet, then don’t allow it to be indexed.
AstroJetson 6y ago
So I wonder how long it will take the disinformation teams to start leveraging their content on Pinterest (or did I miss the start already?).
- tt433 6y ago
  If I'm not mistaken they moderate anti-vax content, or claimed to do so many years ago at the least. Who knows how far that goes
deleted 6y ago
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deleted 6y ago
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124 points by jmilinovich 6y ago

Pinterest and GIS (Google Image Search) are so bad now. I find things in GIS and click on it, and it opens pinterest. And then when I'm in Pinterest I click on the image again because I'm trying to track down the original place the image came from, and when I click on it, it literally LOADS a Google Image Search Result page. For Google to reward this behavior must mean they no longer have anyone actually updating GIS anymore. It's probably in permafrost maintenance mode.

dmitrygr 6y ago

Message to pinterest: Please stop ruining google image search. Please. Just stop

jmilinovich 6y ago
Pinterest is definitely an expert level content farm. For Google Image Search in particular, you're right that it does create a bit of a broken end user experience that feels a bit misleading. It's surprising that Google hasn't cracked down on this yet or dealt with the obvious dupes problem (showing image result from Pinterest that came from website a vs showing result from website a).
nraynaud 6y ago
And google search. I was googling around to try to understand how a trailer suspension is designed, and I had pinterest on the first page. Do people actually buy their engineering explanations from Pinterest?
- jmilinovich 6y ago
  Pinterest <3's the longtail :) I'd imagine they have some good diagrams of trailer suspension designs, but almost certainly not as good as a solid YouTube video or blog post..
cblconfederate 6y ago
even without pinterest, G search is dysfunctional with its side pane. Yandex is better
- bserge 6y ago
  Yandex seemed to skew towards non-US/English resources (in Europe, tbf), which could be a good thing depending on what you're looking for. I just tried it again and I have to say I'm impressed by the results. It's like an earlier Google. I tried a few searches that made me rage on Google (dnsmasq, HP/Win10 and ACPI, Openwrt and TomatoUSB related) and Yandex actually shows some decent stuff. Like holy hell, Google tried very hard to show trash from the biggest websites like Youtube (of course), Microsoft (fuck their answers forums, honestly), HP (ditto), Reddit (actually useful), the usual. Even Github is lower in the rankings. Bing is slightly better, but not by much. Yandex shows some useful links I haven't come across. Very interesting, I need to remember to use it more.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    Yandex is particularly good at finding people, especially if you work out the crop tool.
recursive 6y ago
You should re-address your message to google.

mobilio 6y ago

Probably Pinterest is preparing to be acquired. That's why their SEO strategy is perfect!

diveanon 6y ago

I honestly do not understand why google allows pinterest to wreck their image search. I'm sure there is some sort of ad kick back, but it is just awful. Its one of the main reasons I switched to duckduckgo as my default search.

nvrGiveUp 6y ago
I am not convinced it's "SEO" or plenty of other small companies with perfect SEO would be similarly high. Over the years Google has gotten especially questionable in various content it recommends, and as an opposite, hiding wikipedia from results unless specifically adding wiki.
bombcar 6y ago
Any GIS result that’s from Pinterest - I have NEVER been able to find the image shown in the preview on the resultant page.
wmeredith 6y ago
Is there a way to just block a domain from my search results? I swear I used to be able to do this.
- fatbird 6y ago
  Per search, if you preface the site operator with - (e.g., -site:pinterest.com), it'll exclude that site. It doesn't help much because pinterest results pollute from multiple top level country domains.
  - mkr-hn 6y ago
    Try -inurl:pinterest
  - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    `-site:domain.*` works to exclude all country codes.
- tesseract 6y ago

keyle 6y ago

For the sake of SEO, Pinterest needs to go.

diveanon 6y ago
The most effective form of SEO these days is paying for ads.

LordAtlas 6y ago

Pinterest is a cancer in the world of useful content. It's bad enough that they've destroyed Google image search, but now I see results from them bleeding on to regular search as well, which boggles my mind because Pinterest just links to other sites (while making it next to impossible to find the actual site.) I hate Pinterest so much that I've set up a keyword shortcut in Chrome search for image search that adds "-site:pinterest.com" automatically when searching.

easytiger 6y ago
My now wife was using Pinterest as a kind of memo board for preparations for our wedding. I signed up and even after a month the UI flow was so incomprehensible I had no idea how it was supposed to work. Achieving basic tasks was beyond me. Yet lots of people with non tech brains seemed to just accept it's imperfections and inherently unpredictable UI as normal for modern technology.
- elcomet 6y ago
  I think there's a disconnection between tech people and other people. I know plenty of non tech people which are perfectly happy with pinterest, looking for cooking recipe or DIY ideas there and pinterest gives them perfectly what they're looking for. They don't care about it's impact on google search or other tech stuff.
- DanBC 6y ago
  It's just visual bookmarking, with the addition of your bookmarks being categorised how you like and publicly visible. You sign up for pinterest. You create a couple of different boards. You install the pinterest extension. Now when you browse the internet and you see an image you like you clicky the browser button (from the extension) and select what board of yours you want it to go to. Or you can visit Pinterest and search for a thing, and browse the results, and then save some of those things to your boards. Other people searching Google or Pinterest for a thing may be shown a link to your Pinterest board, and that link will include a link to your profile and your boards. I agree the UI sucks, but all UI sucks. Pinterest's sucky UI isn't particularly worse than all the others.

solarkraft 6y ago

Pinterest is honestly a relatively fine platform with interesting and well thought out apps (can't say that about some of the major players). It just hurts that they keep spamming search results. You'd think at this point it would do more to hurt their brand than help it. If they had the simplest tool to help tracking down an image's source at least they would provide any value.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

cookiengineer 6y ago

What I don't understand is why pinterest can survive in a world of DMCA takedowns. I mean, their whole business model is stealing content they don't own.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
esperent 6y ago
I guess there's no big organisation fighting image copyright the way there is with film or music.
- hetspookjee 6y ago
  I believe Getty images is quite large in owning the image copyright space and is also pretty aggresive in enforcing.
  - dazc 6y ago
    Getty are quite successful at pursuing the little guy via aggressive emails and sock-puppet forum accounts. Maybe not so effective against the big guy with lawyers on the payroll?
m0llusk 6y ago
Their business model is connecting buyers with products and they are making bank which gives them strong influence.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nbzso 6y ago

I am just waiting for the (moment of true) to hit us all. After 20 years of advancements in web technology we are an inch from making it useful only for ad companies and consumer driven behaviour. Is usenet valuable alternative for filtering out tons of crap pushed by ad empires ?

echelon 6y ago
Google has never felt more ripe for disruption. Their main product is utter trash and the DOJ is actively seeking to decouple their moat. If you use Google search, you're admitting that you want ads. Google rearranges the results to prefer AMP and other ad infested properties before relevant results. The internal Google culture is fucked. They launch random things and close them, all to feed their chaotic promo cycle. It leads to distrust and anger amongst users. I'm still furious about Google Play Music going away. YouTube music recently put this [1] in my indie music playlist. Their current CEO reminds me of Ballmer. They need to bring in a Nadella to save things and make Google cool again. Also, when's the last time we heard from Page, Brin, or Schmidt? I thought they cared more. FWIW, I've started using Bing and I've been quite happy with it. > After 20 years of advancements in web technology we are an inch from making it useful only for ad companies and consumer driven behaviour. Is usenet valuable alternative for filtering out tons of crap pushed by ad empires ? Google is responsible for the web atrophying. Once Google and Facebook have been chastised by the DOJ, we might see a return to form for the web. If not, maybe we should start building more distributed / p2p content distribution. How difficult would it be to design semantic markup for blogs and comments, and start "torrenting" news articles in a web of trust? Signal to noise ratio would skyrocket. This sort of design keeps the marketers out completely. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxp8qPEwSXM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxp8qPEwSXM (decidedly not indie or alt rock music)
- nbzso 6y ago
  Bing has undoubtedly the best image search. I don't think Google will be able to be cool again. This concept of coolness was fake from the get go. I keep hearing about the decentralisation of internet, but so far nothing is happening on a big scale to give an alternative.

young_unixer 6y ago

Alternative title: How to make people waste time when they're using Google Images.

dougunplugged 6y ago

What John says in this post about "Pinterest as a source of inbound links" is false. Pinterest uses rel="nofollow" on external links, which severs any value the links have for SEO. For example: Pin collection page: <a class="GestaltTouchableFocus" href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/83131400/ornaments-pine-cone-gnomes-elves-set-of?ref=sr_gallery_5&ga_search_query=ornaments&ga_order=most_relevant&ga_ship_to=US&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_facet=handmade&epik=dj0yJnU9ZzlQMjJYUEJEZXc2MF9haHRxUk8tRFBjVHIzVjdlbUomcD0wJm49Sk1GUUtISnJzR3hPVXhBRXRFWF9iUSZ0PUFBQUFBRi1LS1NF https://www.etsy.com/listing/83131400/ornaments-pine-cone-gn..." rel="nofollow" Pin detail page: <a class="linkModuleActionButton" href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/83131400/ornaments-pine-cone-gnomes-elves-set-of?ref=sr_gallery_5&ga_search_query=ornaments&ga_order=most_relevant&ga_ship_to=US&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_facet=handmade&epik=dj0yJnU9ZzlQMjJYUEJEZXc2MF9haHRxUk8tRFBjVHIzVjdlbUomcD0wJm49Sk1GUUtISnJzR3hPVXhBRXRFWF9iUSZ0PUFBQUFBRi1LS1NF https://www.etsy.com/listing/83131400/ornaments-pine-cone-gn..." rel="nofollow"> You aren't going to improve your SEO by being on Pinterest, at least by getting links from Pinterest. It's possible someone else sees your site from browsing Pinterest and then links to it from their site.

bserge 6y ago
Last time I was into SEO, the big "experts" seemed to agree that even nofollow links are useful for ranking. Now I'm not sure if it was just more bullshit (the industry is full of it), although it makes sense that with how widespread nofollow is these days, Google might have no choice but to take them into account. Otherwise they'd have to ignore like half the Web.
- rchaud 6y ago
  That's correct. If Google treated every Twitter/FB/Reddit link as useless just because those sites attach 'nofollow' to every external link, it would have a much worse idea of what links are relevant and what's not. Nofollow is still useful for site owners that are using it as intended, and not as a site-wide policy. It's just that most sites do not get a fraction of the traffic a big tweet or Reddit post would get.
6y ago

blackrock 6y ago

To be honest, I think Google and search engines should delist Pinterest pictures from their image search. And from all search in general. Why? Because their data is not really usable. To even view it, Pinterest forces you to log in. Why must I log in? If your data is not meant for the internet, then don’t allow it to be indexed.

AstroJetson 6y ago

So I wonder how long it will take the disinformation teams to start leveraging their content on Pinterest (or did I miss the start already?).

tt433 6y ago
If I'm not mistaken they moderate anti-vax content, or claimed to do so many years ago at the least. Who knows how far that goes

deleted 6y ago

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deleted 6y ago

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