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Deconstructing Pinterest’s reverse-image-search SEO growth hack

rankscience.com

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Re: Deconstructing Pinterest’s reverse-image-search SEO growth hack

#11

Post by ngold »

ryanb wrote: post #9
andreygrehov wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got something I've always been curious about. If the website was penalized by Google, is it possible to rank _after_ the penalty is lifted? Edit: the story behind this question. A friend of mine has a local business. He once paid an SEO agency to do optimizations for his website. After a while, the website was penalized because of some shady stuff the agency did (paid links?). The penalty is long gone, but it lo…

Yep, this is called a "manual action" by Google, and they'll often tell you exactly what you're doing that they find offensive. Usually this involves buying spammy backlinks. You can resolve the issue and ask them to re-evaluate your site by submitting a Reconsideration request. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044175?hl=en

Good stuff. Tell us more googly stories of interest. This is super fascinating.

Re: Deconstructing Pinterest’s reverse-image-search SEO growth hack

#12

Post by Androider »

ryanb wrote: post #4
smcameron wrote: post #3

Back when I was an SRE at google for their web crawler, I thought they should de-index pinterest (did not get any traction with this). I still think they should de-index pinterest. I add "-site:pinterest.*" to all my image searches.

Super interesting. A lot of people feel the same way. Why do you think you weren't able to get any traction for this?

They probably look at the metrics and see that a lot of people are going to the Pinterest results. That the results are garbage and undermine the Google images search experience is much harder to measure.

Re: Deconstructing Pinterest’s reverse-image-search SEO growth hack

#14

Post by cj »

ryanb wrote: post #2

Hey folks, I'm the author here and CEO of RankScience (YC W17). AMA about this growth hack or SEO in general!

In your opinion, is this a growth hack you'd suggest one of your customers try? Or does it cross a line in your opinion?

"SEO Optimization" is difficult because it's such an imperfect science (or perhaps not, based on your company name!) What are a couple examples or anecdotes of SEO "hacks" / optimizations that are least obvious or things most people wouldn't think of, that have had the most significant impact on SEO?

Re: Deconstructing Pinterest’s reverse-image-search SEO growth hack

#15

Post by ryanb »

ngold wrote: post #11
ryanb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, this is called a "manual action" by Google, and they'll often tell you exactly what you're doing that they find offensive. Usually this involves buying spammy backlinks. You can resolve the issue and ask them to re-evaluate your site by submitting a Reconsideration request. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044175?hl=en

Good stuff. Tell us more googly stories of interest. This is super fascinating.

Engagement on links clicked in Gmail is likely a ranking factor in Google search.

We've done studies with popular e-mail newsletters that showed URLs performing better in search on days when they've been sent out to hundreds of thousands of people.

Re: Deconstructing Pinterest’s reverse-image-search SEO growth hack

#16

Post by dawnerd »

smcameron wrote: post #3

Back when I was an SRE at google for their web crawler, I thought they should de-index pinterest (did not get any traction with this). I still think they should de-index pinterest. I add "-site:pinterest.*" to all my image searches.

Yeah I don’t get it. Panda was supposed to clean up results - and it did for a while. Seems priorities changed. Kinda makes me wonder if someone higher up at Google is invested in Pinterest.

Re: Deconstructing Pinterest’s reverse-image-search SEO growth hack

#17

Post by mattigames »

smcameron wrote: post #3

Back when I was an SRE at google for their web crawler, I thought they should de-index pinterest (did not get any traction with this). I still think they should de-index pinterest. I add "-site:pinterest.*" to all my image searches.

Yeah, photo stock sites and pinterest (and pinterest-like sites) should be opt-in when using google image search.

Re: Deconstructing Pinterest’s reverse-image-search SEO growth hack

#18

Post by superasn »

smcameron wrote: post #3

Back when I was an SRE at google for their web crawler, I thought they should de-index pinterest (did not get any traction with this). I still think they should de-index pinterest. I add "-site:pinterest.*" to all my image searches.

I wish we could do the same for Shutterstock and all these useless stock image websites that have totally hacked Google image search yet Google won't do anything about them for some reason.

Re: Deconstructing Pinterest’s reverse-image-search SEO growth hack

#19

Post by devin »

smcameron wrote: post #3

Back when I was an SRE at google for their web crawler, I thought they should de-index pinterest (did not get any traction with this). I still think they should de-index pinterest. I add "-site:pinterest.*" to all my image searches.

Any other flags you throw on searches?

Re: Deconstructing Pinterest’s reverse-image-search SEO growth hack

#20

Post by skymt »

airstrike wrote: post #13
ryanb wrote: post #2

Hey folks, I'm the author here and CEO of RankScience (YC W17). AMA about this growth hack or SEO in general!

"Growth hack" sounds so benign when this is really tantamount to spam

"Growth hack" is an industry euphemism for "unethical practice." You can tell it doesn't literally mean "growth hack" because it's being applied here to the website that Alexa currently ranks #152 worldwide and the typical excuses about how you need to get a little dirty when you're a tiny business just getting started don't remotely hold water.
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