Is Pinterest social media or a search engine?And what role does it play in the digital marketing landscape? These are great questions that I’ll be answering throughout this blog post and I’ll also be sharing some real life examples of how I’ve been leveraging Pinterest lately to drive traffic to one of my websites and other social media accounts.
If you’re a new reader, hi! I’m Thomas and I’ve been creating content on the internet since 2012. When it comes to creating content I tend to gravitate towards platforms that have inherent search engine capabilities (such as Pinterest) as I believe search is the most effective way to get discovered on the internet, particularly if you’re starting from scratch.
As long as you can understand what users are looking for and can genuinely provide value to them in relation to their searches, getting discovered becomes a matter of when, not it.
The goal of this blog is to simply share my experiences and case studies created for search over the years and provide some value to those of you who might just be getting started.
With that said, let’s dive in and take a closer look at what Pinterest and SEO have in common and whether or not Pinterest should be classed as a social platform or search engine.
What Pinterest is All About
So, what is the Pinterest platform exactly and when did Pinterest come out?
Pinterest began development in 2009 and made its official debut in 2010. At the time of launch was only available to users who were invited to join and would later be released to the public in 2012. The platform was initially released as a social media network that offered a unique point of difference in comparison to other established social media giants.
So unlike Facebook, which focused on connecting people within their existing networks, Pinterest provided a space where users could discover, share, follow and save ideas visually bringing a whole new use case to the social networking landscape.
The first time I actually heard of Pinterest was back in 2014 when my journey in social media had just begun. At the time, I was in absolute awe of The Brit Crew YouTubers and was trying to learn as much as possible about how these young teenagers were managing to amass these large online followings by just posting videos of themselves…
In my research, I stumbled across a podcast interview featuring one of The Brit Crew stars, Louise Pentland. In the interview, she highlighted how she initially started out creating content as a blogger and was leveraging Pinterest to gain exposure to her content.
After listening, I headed over to Pinterest and had a play around with it, but I didn’t really click with the concept at first and kind of just forgot about it.
It wasn’t until about mid 2015 when I started working for a digital marketing start up founded by my Dad and his business partner, that Pinterest would show up on my radar again. Although I was hired to build webpages and web forms, My Dad and his business partner consistently encouraged me to learn as much as possible about digital marketing and gave me access to learning resources from Digital Marketer Lab, which interestingly enough had a Pinterest course in it!
It was this course that would eventually help me understand more about how Pinterest works. I really appreciate its true power as a digital marketing and personal branding tool.
the idea was for users to share practical ideas, inspiration, and resources for achieving various goals, from home improvement projects to recipes to hairstyle ideas and beyond.
And what set Pinterest apart even further was its "pinboard" format, that enabled users to save and organise ideas that they liked for easy access later. The pinboard feature alone turned Pinterest into a go-to platform for creative thinkers and doers looking to bring inspiring ideas to life.
Over time, the platform's focus on idea discovery and organisation transformed it into more than just a place to scroll and interact. It pretty much became a practical tool for planning and problem solving, giving it dual functionality as both a social media platform and a search engine in 1.
Whether that was the goal from the outset, I’m not certain, but this unique value proposition definitely cemented Pinterest as a major player in the digital space.
How Pinterest Works Compared To Other Search Engines
So now we’ve covered what Pinterest is used for and how it’s different compared to other social media platforms, let’s look a little closer at how Pinterest works compared to other search engines too.
Search engines completely changed the world by providing a way for people to access information they were looking for in a super simple format. The power of a search engine lies in its algorithms that can sift through massive amounts of data to provide the user with the most relevant results based on their search queries.
I.e, if a user wanted to find a plumbing website, google would serve them the most relevant one based on their query, they’d click the link and would suddenly be redirected from Google to the target website. Almost like the bullet train of the internet. You say what kind of place you want to go to, and the search engine will take you there.
The traditional format that early search engines like Google would provide, were basic text results in the form of a blue link on a white page. While this format wasn’t overly appealing to look at, it was very effective and kind of proved that sometimes, less is more.
On top of their unique functionality in providing users with highly relevant information, search engines also provided a unique opportunity for authors and creators to have their work or businesses discovered based on the kind of content they put online.
This 2 way mechanism of seamlessly connecting users and creators solidified the search engine as one of the most powerful marketing tools of all time and thus, the great game of search engine optimisation was born.
As the internet became more visually friendly in supporting image and video file formats, the creation of visual search engines like Pinterest inevitably followed. In its early stages, the blended functionality between social network and search engine is what made Pinterest different from others specifically in the way it delivered search results to users.
The first key difference was that search results were, and still are, served via image or video and never solely by text. This allowed users to select results based on visuals that match their intent, rather than words alone.
Over time, other search engines like Google have adopted visual heavy search results especially when it comes to e-commerce and paid advertising, however, this search result format is something Pinterest has maintained since its inception and still to this day remains as a core feature of the platform.
The second notable thing that sets Pinterest's search engine capabilities apart from others is the source of the search results themselves. Unlike Google or ChatGPT that filter and display results based on all available data on the internet, Pinterest will only serve relevant results from users who have uploaded that content to the platform. Meaning that every result you see has been uploaded specifically for Pinterest users, by Pinterest users.
While this feature could potentially be seen as limiting to the amount possible solutions to give a user, it further emphasises the social networking aspect of the platform making it feel more like an exclusive community that is creatively curated for like minded users with intent.
The 3rd major advantage Pinterest has when it comes to providing highly relevant results again lies within its social networking capabilities of allowing users to save pins, hit the like button, watch videos, follow other users and click through to external websites.
While other search engines can track similar user behaviour, Pinterest gets a fuller picture on what users are doing by owning the entire platform as well as every piece of content that its users interact with, enabling them to make incredibly accurate predictions on what results will likely meet the users needs and even predict future trends before they occur.
All of these things combined make Pinterest a powerhouse for driving high quality traffic to websites. So, if you’ve been asking yourself “can pinterest help my business?”, the answer is HECK, YES! And we’re about to go deeper that in the next section.