Leosghost; Thanks

Oops, the third link, to the Buzzfeed report is wrong:

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Pinterest users posted hundreds of photos from my website. Pinterest however generates less than 1/1000th of the traffic to the website. I blocked Pinterest, starting today.

@Chrisv1963
Did the pins have links back to your website ?

@Chrisv1963
Did the pins have links back to your website ?

Yes

One more useless social network.

But use it if you want to help someone else to become billionaire...

One more useless social network

Why would Pinterest users want to visit your website if they can view your images full size without leaving Pinterest?

It is useless and actually a danger for business now that Pinterest pages start showing up in the SERPS and pushing websites with original content down. Pages filled with copied content listed in front of websites built by hard working business owners and webmasters. Do no evil ...

...now that Pinterest pages start showing up in the SERPS and pushing websites with original content down.

Indeed. With "SOMEWEBSITE.COM PINTEREST" in the Google search query, I'm beginning to frequently observe the website "SOMEWEBSITE.COM" being completely obliterated from all SERPs all the way down to the very last one. More often, SOMEWEBSITE.COM is significantly below a number of Pinterest pages (I've seen up to 5) in the SERPs.

I've just added a Pinterest button to my website.
It cant hurt and it may help.

Wanelo is rising up the Alexa ratings too.

Pinterest users posted hundreds of photos from my website. Pinterest however generates less than 1/1000th of the traffic to the website. I blocked Pinterest, starting today.

According to Webmaster Tools I have 14600 links from pinterest, 1980 pages linked. This means that at least 14600 times someone pinned one of my images.

This generates less than 70 visits per day.

Another comparison:

6537 links in WMT
235 linked pages in WMT
4353 visits for the past 30 days Google analytics
100-200 visits per day Google analytics

Most of the pins are by users and I am not that active on there but will pin some stuff occasionally.

Ok

~150 visitors a day is a paltry number from 6537 links! Thanks for sharing the data.

What sort of website is this, without getting into specifics?

6537 links in WMT
235 linked pages in WMT
4353 visits for the past 30 days Google analytics
100-200 visits per day Google analytics

Most of the pins are by users and I am not that active on there but will pin some stuff occasionally.

Are the images small (thumbnail size) or full size? My images are full size.

They are full size images.

Conversion rates are definitely no as good as other sources - organics search, blog, etc.

The site is small and it's a DIY type of site with original content and a subsection of the site is product feed. Both sides of the site gets pinned but I'd say more the content side.

I'd do anything to get 150 visitors a day.
Especially as they are costing nothing.

150 visitors a day are, in the grand scheme of things, hardly enough to feed a flea.

These visitors do come with a high cost.

(1) You surrender your content to Pinterest.
(2) Your visitors will see your content on Pinterest and no longer need your website.
(3) Your content can be hotlinked from Pinterest to anywhere on the web without your knowledge or consent.
(4) Your website will compete against its own content displayed on Pinterest in the SERPs.
(5) The pinterest.com/source/yourwebsite.com is an aggregate of your pinned content and tends to rank rather highly.
(6) Pinterest links are nofollow, it's shooting oneself in the foot before the race gets started.

@helleborine
I suppose it depends what sort of website/product/service you have.
I have an eCommerce site that sells a unique product that is not very well known.
So therefore to me the more people that see it the better.

If you're selling an actual product, rather than displaying content, that's a whole different ball game but still 150 visitors isn't a lot. Pinterest might be a good adjunct to your marketing campaign but chances are you won't see miraculous results so I wouldn't spend too much time on it.

Unless you're selling Reese's peanut butter cups wrapped in bacon, dipped in batter, deep fried, and smothered in fudge and ice cream... that's the sort of thing that goes viral over there.

Yes that's why I think its important that posters say what they are doing or where they are coming from.

Eg if you are a webmaster
Or a graphics designer
Or an SEO consultant
Own your own company selling prodocts
Sell ebooks
Sell get rich schemes
Trying to make money using Adsense

Nothing wrong with any of them, but they all have different perspectives.

Nothing wrong with any of them, but they all have different perspectives.

Where do you get these generalisations and assumptions from ..Alexa ?


Eg if you are a webmaster ..check
Or a graphics designer ...check..( you forgot , artists, photographers, designers, image makers ..check )
Or an SEO consultant ...( I very rarely do it..clients are on the whole annoying ) rather do my own..
Own your own company selling prodocts[sic]..check ( not ebooks ) tangible products..
Sell ebooks ..check [you forgot other intangibles )
Sell get rich schemes .. no..my ethics get in the way :)..a shame, because there are many many "marks"
Trying to make money using Adsense ..check ( making, not trying ;)

Pinterest is out sourced, crowd sourced IP theft, of very little value to any of the above, and all such sites cost us more time and work dealing wit their larceny, than any possible dubious benefits they might bring..

(1) You surrender your content to Pinterest.
(2) Your visitors will see your content on Pinterest and no longer need your website.
(3) Your content can be hotlinked from Pinterest to anywhere on the web without your knowledge or consent.
(4) Your website will compete against its own content displayed on Pinterest in the SERPs.
(5) The pinterest.com/source/yourwebsite.com is an aggregate of your pinned content and tends to rank rather highly.
(6) Pinterest links are nofollow, it's shooting oneself in the foot before the race gets started.

When pinterest came out not sure what to make of it. So still evaluating and perhaps that is why I have not been actively pinning and promoting. Still observing the impact. However I haven't seen any negatives thus far as you have pointed out. If I do see negative impact, the "no pin" meta will go on but so far it's fine.

In my case:

1. True and not true. All images are marked with my domain name so even if the images are used/reused/repinned it is not as image worthy as the original pictures without watermarks. It's not an actual watermark but a border at the bottom with the domain name. If it's a large image than I may also add a faded watermark. I guess that's the price you pay for little bit of traffic and branding. Perhaps that's why I see more type in traffic for my domain name as well. Also, if I am actively posting a pin I will upload a teaser pin that will draw them to my site so all original content is still on my site. And yes, even my teaser is watermarked. So pin all you want.

2. True and not true. Since it's a DIY site I get lots of click through to view the content and users will friend, tweet, bookmark, share or produce an Adsense click. Some even buy. Any of these actions are a good to me. However, for some content that don't require detail explanations I am sure I am loosing visitors from that since they won't require access to the site to understand an image or concept.

3. Hotlink taken care of in htaccess.

4. Not true. My site gets the original content first with lots of content + keywords. I also make sure I upload into WMT and for Google to grab the page and submit to the index for me.

5. Have not seen that at all.

6. Yup. We all know that we don't get any link juice but it's the human visitors we want. They are the ones that will link to you and share.

I would be fine if Google only used Pinterest data as a social media sign to help rank pages. If people want to pin it, then it must be ok. If several people pin the same content, then it must be really good and it should move up in the serps.

The problem however is that for some Google Image searches the Pinterest images show up instead of the original image on my website. Google knows that all Pinterest content is copied and should NEVER list it. It's almost like selling stolen goods.

"3. Hotlink taken care of in htaccess. "

NO. People can hotlink the images that are displayed on Pinterest even if you have hotlink protection enabled for your website.

I agree with chrisv1963 that's it's high time Google cleans up house and penalizes these websites.

The images that are displayed on Pinterest is on pinterest's server so I don't care about them stealing bandwidth from Pinterest. As long as they don't steal mine.

So what about the other social media sharing sites that are also image sharing sites. Don't know much about them but see some of my images on weheartit, indulgy. I am sure there are others out there I don't know..

On Facebook and tumblr images are pretty much being shared all over too.

Bandwidth is cheap nowadays, few are the webmasters enabling anti-hotlinking to save bandwidth.

Frequently, the issue is that while you may want your pictures on Pinterest, but that doesn't mean you want them on every other website, unbeknownst to you, or even on your competitors' website. You can't file a DMCA if someone hotlinks an image you've sacrificed to Pinterest's use, off Pinterest's servers. The hotlinker's host has no jurisdiction if the hotlinked image is hosted on Pinterest. Ultimately you'd have to remove such an image from Pinterest, or nothing.

As always, there is the issue of scale.

If you have 1000 images on your website and 3 of them are pinned, who cares, really.

If you have 1000 images on your website and they are pinned 30,000 times, that's another can of worms. In some cases, that renders the source website... obsolete.

Bandwidth is cheap nowadays, few are the webmasters enabling anti-hotlinking to save bandwidth.

I use anti-hotlinking not to save bandwidth but to preserve server resources that would otherwise get tied up answering HTTP requests that are better reserved for my actual visitors. When they realize the hotlink doesn't work they go looking for an image elsewhere.

Basically anything you put on the web people can get a hold of no matter what. However, for the average user you can make it more difficult but for the savvy hacker, they can easily find ways to get a hold of something if they want it badly enough. My images with watermark, not so much of an attraction.

Plus most of my good stuff is behind Flash image galleries that the average pinterest, tumblr, blogger don't know how to get to. Even if they did, they will have to get rid of the watermark, so no incentive there. They move on to someone else. What I put out for pinterest and for the user to pin is my advertisement and I purposely put that outside the Flash image gallery, for branding for my site. It's my AD. And if my competitor would please use my images that would be great, I would absolutely love it.

As a creator of original content I know how pain stakingly it can be to have your images stolen. Every picture is styled, props created, photographed by me. But yet I hope that by going about this route (give a little but hold back some images) that I am still able to stay in the loop with my market who happen to be the same market that has embraced pinterest. You either try to make the most of technology and stay current or shut yourself out. With the social signals being so important these days to Google and perhaps the other search engines, I see this as the best solution right now. Doesn't mean it's the best but the best for my site to this date.

Well we don't know how much "social signal" we're getting out of Pinterest NOFOLLOW links. I suspect none.

I have found that I have more traffic since I cleansed Pinterest of my content, and that increase came is summer when my traffic usually dips. While everyone's results will vary, for me, Pinterest was a measurable traffic vacuum that only returned referral crumbs.

Well we don't know how much "social signal" we're getting out of Pinterest NOFOLLOW links. I suspect none.

Links are static whether NOFOLLOW or FOLLOW and are not a "social signal".

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ Pages, Youtube Channel, and Pinterest links are ALL NO FOLLOW. Not just Pinterest. It's your interaction on those pages that creates that "social signal" and not the static links.