• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, July 31, 2017

Pinterest on Monday announced plans to increase its focus on Search and Lens, making the features available on the home page, after discovering that monthly mobile text searches rose more than 40% and visual searches nearly 60% year-over-year (YoY).

As more searches occur on Pinterest, and nearly 85% of searches occur on mobile devices, advertisers can connect with more people interested in their products and services. Now, ads can be served against searches that originate from the home feed.

A new search bar at the top of the home page feed provides a way for site visitors to search for ideas from the Explore tab. The Lens camera, which provides a visual search instead of a text search, will also allow someone to search for a product by snapping a photo to find related ideas.

Audrey Tsang, product manager for home feed at Pinterest, also wrote in a blog post that Pinterest made some behind-the-scenes improvements in an effort to eliminate the chances of seeing duplicate Pins.

Tsang pointed out that those who search on Pinterest are open to new possibilities. They may not be sure what they are looking for, but when they come across an idea that looks good, they can explore related ideas until they find exactly what works best for them.

"This kind of open-minded searching is what makes Pinterest so unique," Tsang wrote.

Many people start with a broad search, and then narrow in on the specific topic. In fact, 73% of all Pinterest traffic comes from people who start off their search with just one to three keywords. And 97% of all searches on Pinterest do not include a brand name, which gives smaller, unknown brands an opportunity to attract new consumers.

eMarketer estimates that nearly 53% of Pinterest users are female compared with 62% of men, making up about 69 million users. The analyst firm estimates there will be nearly 80 million users by 2021.

Consumer behavior is changing the way Pinterest and other sites offer services. For example, planning on Pinterest typically occurs several months earlier than traditional search, which enables businesses to connect with customers when they are still undecided about what to buy. Amazon recently launched Spark, which enables people to search and discover new ideas and then click through to the brand's page in the marketplace.

Amazon on Monday said small businesses and entrepreneurs sold more than 2 billion items in a record-breaking first half of 2017, supporting more than 300 million active customers.