Pinterest Pinnings For Search Marketers

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About 229 people follow the average Pinterest user, who spends approximately 89 minutes on the site connecting board visitors to brand Web pages with a click of a button. This person has 3 boards, 171 pins, and 28 likes. Worldwide, 83% are female, and the remainder are male, according to a study released this week. 

The Engauge's Power Panel survey, compiled with stats from a number of sources, such as Comscore, Econsultancy.com, LexisNexis, and Compete, suggests pins come from numerous places. A tad more than 59% come from user-uploaded content, followed by Etsy with 9.36%, and Google at 8.25%. When it comes to finding pins via Google, 82.9% come from Image Search; 11.59, other; 2.78%, Reader; and 2.73%, Search. 

Other pin sources include Tumblr at 5.88%; Polyvore, 4.51%; Flickr, 4.26%; We Hear It, 2.89%; Houzz, 2.06%; Bhg, 1.89%; and Imgfave, 1.80%.

The survey also points to the most popular categories. Fashion takes the No. 1 category with 2.76%, followed by Desserts at 2.21%, Plain at 1.92%, Clothes at 1.86, Birthday at 1.13%, and Inspirational 1.12%.

Who's pinning? New Yorkers pin the most, with 22%, followed by Los Angeles at 15%, Austin at 10%, Minneapolis at 10%, San Francisco at 8%, Portland at 7%, and San Diego at 6%.

The study makes some interesting points. It describes Pinterest as a connective tissue, which emphasizes the importance of optimizing company Web sites, content and social sites like Facebook. The connection drives people from Pinterest to the Web site or Facebook Fan page for more information about a product or service.

With all new ideas, Pinterest comes with its own complications: Copyright infringement. Who owns the rights to the photos being shared on the site? Obviously, if a brand posts "Pin" buttons they welcome pinning, but what if they don't? After all, people can't use someone else's stuff.

Last month, Kirsten shared her experience of unpinning her pins and deleting the Pinterest account. As a lawyer, she views the site and its content with fresh eyes.

The majority is unique data Engauge sourced using LexisNexis’s HPCC Systems Big Data platform. Only 3 items of data came from Comscore, Compete, Econsultancy.com, as well as qualitative data came from the Engauge Power Panel.

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4 comments on "Pinterest Pinnings For Search Marketers".

1. Jonathan Hutter from Garrand
   

   commented on: March 14, 2012 at 2:42 p.m.
   Data is always interesting. Not having seen the actual report, I'm not sure how the data drives to the conclusion that Pinterest is "connective tissue," without knowing where the user-uploaded content originates. Are people really linking to web sites, or just copying content to boards? I do believe one of the conclusions that is accurate is that, if 83% of the users are female, the remainder are likely male.
2. Francis Skipper from 451 Marketing
   

   commented on: March 14, 2012 at 2:56 p.m.
   Pinterest has no SEO value anymore, especially not as described above. Optimizing your website can only indirectly give value through Pinterest. A user may first find your "cool" well optimized content through organic search, then pin it, but the SEO value ends there there. Once in Pinterest, pinned links provide zero SEO value for the pinned items because they have the "nofollow" tag on them - meaning Google will not give link credit for any links. Pinterest's traffic and viral benefits, however, can not be disputed. Brands would do well to have a Pinterest strategy...
3. Laurie Sullivan from lauriesullivan
   

   commented on: March 14, 2012 at 3:20 p.m.
   Francis - You make an interesting about the "nofollow" tag. Any way to change that?
4. Francis Skipper from 451 Marketing
   

   commented on: March 14, 2012 at 3:28 p.m.
   Laurie- Unfortunately, no. The nofollow tag is there by design to benefit pinterest. It keeps them from bleeding link juice (I know that sounds jargon-y, but it works in this case.) Pinterest, like wikipedia and others realized that to remain an “authority”, they need to have many, many more inbound links than outbound links. Essentially, there is no SEO value from Pinterest at present. To be fair, Engauge may have written their study before Pinterest instituted the nofollow on all outbound links. Francis

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