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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

#31

Post by arkanciscan »

Long time Pinterest user here with a different perspective; back around 2016 there was a serious problem with duplicate images on Pinterest. You couldn't search for the word "bicycle" without seeing the same photo hundreds of times. At some point it got better, and it seemed to me that they were doing some image recognition. It has since gotten MUCH better at suggesting images that are visually similar.

So let me get this straight; you guys are mad because Pinterest has done such a good job of labeling and categorizing images that they come up in most Google Image searches? Show me on the doll where it touched you.

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

#32

Post by blinding-streak »

foobarian wrote: post #26
nine_k wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An obvious question: does Pinterest buy a lot of Google's ad services?

Another obvious question: does Google pay for the valuable free content they get from Wikipedia?

"The licenses Wikipedia uses grant free access to our content in the same sense that free software is licensed freely. Wikipedia content can be copied, modified, and redistributed if and only if the copied version is made available on the same terms to others and acknowledgment of the authors of the Wikipedia article used is included (a link back to the article is generally thought to satisfy the attribution requirement; see below for more details). Copied Wikipedia content will therefore remain free under an appropriate license and can continue to be used by anyone subject to certain restrictions, most of which aim to ensure that freedom."

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

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

#33

Post by nine_k »

foobarian wrote: post #26
nine_k wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An obvious question: does Pinterest buy a lot of Google's ad services?

Another obvious question: does Google pay for the valuable free content they get from Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is expressly marking its content as free, and is interested in disseminating it.

I'm not sure that Pinterest's mission is the same.

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

#34

Post by daltonlp »

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.

There's an extension for that :) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unpinterested/gefa...

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

#35

Post by bussierem »

arkanciscan wrote: post #31

Long time Pinterest user here with a different perspective; back around 2016 there was a serious problem with duplicate images on Pinterest. You couldn't search for the word "bicycle" without seeing the same photo hundreds of times. At some point it got better, and it seemed to me that they were doing some image recognition. It has since gotten MUCH better at suggesting images that are visually similar. So let me get…

And I'm sure that's a very great experience when you have a Pinterest account. For the rest of us it makes half of Google image search useless because we can't view the original site image thanks to not having an account.

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

#36

Post by ryanb »

RubenvanE wrote: post #21
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!

SEO ‘hacking’ is clearly positive for the businesses doing it, but the benefits on a larger scale are less clear cut. Do you believe strategies such as outlined in the article are a net positive, negative, or a neutral tactic for search engines and the web at large?

At the end of the day, Google is a private company. They get to set the rules and police search results how they see fit. I don't think Pinterest is doing anything unethical. I do think it is spammy, though.

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

#37

Post by dspillett »

fheld wrote: post #28
foobarian wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another obvious question: does Google pay for the valuable free content they get from Wikipedia?

Not an answer but a data point: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/22/google-org-donates-2-milli...

Any chance of a summary for those who refuse to play TC/Yahoo's privacy game (which last time I did look in more depth made it pretty much impossible to completely opt out of tracking) beyond seeing the interstitial and hitting back?

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

#38

Post by dspillett »

microtherion wrote: post #27
superasn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And lyrics search sites that index songs for which they don't actually have lyrics.

And the many TV/film sites that list "release date", "air date", renewal, season N+1, and so forth, in their page titles & tags even though the page does not contain that information.

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

#39

Post by ForHackernews »

blinding-streak wrote: post #10

There are certain sites like Wikipedia that improve the web's utility for all who use it, small and giant companies alike. Google search is improved by Wikipedia's existence. And then there are sites like Pinterest, that degrade the web's utility for the vast majority of people on Earth. It actually harms Google's search experience (obviously image search) and frustrates us that try to benignly browse images. Why doe…

Maybe Google degrades the web's utility for a million other websites, but they get away with it because they're big.

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

#40

Post by nine_k »

dspillett wrote: post #37
fheld wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an answer but a data point: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/22/google-org-donates-2-milli...

Any chance of a summary for those who refuse to play TC/Yahoo's privacy game (which last time I did look in more depth made it pretty much impossible to completely opt out of tracking) beyond seeing the interstitial and hitting back?

Does an incognito browser window help?
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