Did Pinterest HURT my websites? Check this out...

So with all the craze related to Pinterest lately and being the hottest Social Network right now and great way to get quality backlinks for your websites, I decided that I had to make an account for myself and use it to pin up pictures from my websites and hopefully collect a bunch of re-pins etc.

I dived right into it without much previous research or understanding because the whole concept of pinterest seems pretty straightforward to me.

Here is what happened...

On my new pinterest account, I pinned two pictures of girls in bikinis (no nudity and not really close either) from two of my adult websites

Previously, these two sites were BOTH ranked on Page 1 of Google. One of them was #2 and the other was #4 for their main keyword. Both of these sites are relatively easy to rank because their URL is the girl's firstnamelastname[dot]net and firstnamelastname[dot]org (yes it was a .net and .org)

Now? I can't find either site.

As an adult webmaster, I can tell you that Google bounces adult websites more than any other site out there, but these are two sites that were pretty stable for the most part, so what should I conclude here?

Did pinterest actually HURT these two sites???

I can't think of anything else... I did not make any changes to the websites during this time... no updates... no backlinks... no layout modifications... nothing but a few pics on pinterest.

Also, my Pinterest account is linked to my real name and e-mail address, if that makes any difference.

sorry i never worked for adult website seo.
pm me your url hope i'll find some recovery solution, pinterest can never hurt your website unless you'll pinning 1000's daily using unrelavent pictures which is actually not from your site.
indeed bouce rate is much more if traffic comes from pinterest and may be that hurt your site in a way.. but globally its not actualy pinterest but other factors also involved in ranking of your site.

As you said: "Google bounces adult websites more than any other site out there", why do you think it is not another google dance? Maybe it is just a coincidence with Pinterest SEo you started.

The exact same thing happened to my site a couple of weeks ago..
Google ghosted my 15 year old publishing site as soon as I started building tons of pinterest links.
I am thinking about movin on from this pinterest shit before I waste to much time with it...

roswellufo said:

Google ghosted my 15 year old publishing site as soon as I started building tons of pinterest links.

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No wonder why you got ghosted lol

filipe3x said:

No wonder why you got ghosted lol

Click to expand...

Can anyone define ghosted ?

Pinterest's links to your site have a nofollow attribute. Straight away, images pinned from your website give you no Google love at all. So there's that in the "neutral" column.

Your image, when pinned on Pinterest, is given a default alt tag: "pinned image" . This could hurt your image SEO. Say one image is pinned 8 times with the "pinned image" alt tag on Pinterest. Say that same image has one instance of "red bikini" alt tag on your website. Say someone linked to it with the anchor text "my ex-girlfriend." Your image is 80% "pinned image", 10% red bikini and 10% "my ex-girlfriend" though Google might give more credit to the anchor text than to the alt tag. Your image may lose weight or definition in Google Image search. But with these things, no one can be certain. That's my guesswork. Maybe Pinterest doesn't hurt your Google Image rankings. But I'm certain it's not helping.

It gets worse. Check out: pinterest.com/source/yourwebsite.com. You'll see that for nearly every website who has pinned images, Pinterest has created a page aggregating some recent pins. There can be up to 10 pages. Add ?page=2 to see the second page, Add ?page=3 to see the third, etc.

In a negative SEO hat trick, Pinterest creates links with anchor text yourwebsite.com leading to that aggregate page on pinterest.com/source/yourwebsite.com
That's a double whammy: (1) a page on Pinterest with your domain in the URL (we know how much Google luuuurvs this for ranking), with anchor text yourwebsite.com! That's a great example of elegant and effective negative SEO.

"What are the consequences of this negative SEO?" you will ask.

Should someone google yourwebsite.com in the search query, you'll still rank first. However, pinterest.com/source/yourwebsite.com is very likely going to be a close second. The more pins, and the weaker your competition, the higher this page will rank.

Savvy visitors may still prefer to click on your website, but some may prefer the Pinterest page result, and you may lose visitors.

On pinboards, Pinterest has very small thumbnails (3 or 4) that lead to pinterest.com/source/yourwebsite.com page.

In conclusion, Pinterest creates one nofollow link for you, and boatloads of links to its page that aggregates your content. And you wonder why your rankings may suffer?

Matt Cutts got sick of jerking it to your chick (the one that the name of the website.net)

Matt likes variety.

Kosher1 said:

Matt Cutts got sick of jerking it to your chick (the one that the name of the website.net)

Matt likes variety.

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Occam's Razor settles it again!

BlackHatWidow said:

Pinterest's links to your site have a nofollow attribute.

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My pins show up in google. Also, according to searchengineland.com, the links are do follow.

redrubies said:

My pins show up in google. Also, according to searchengineland.com, the links are do follow.

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The links are nofollow. Check yourself.

Go to a page with a pin. CONTROL U in Firefox for source code. Search for "nofollow"

BINGO

Links are nofollow.

You can now go back to searchengineland.com and set them straight.

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Your pins showing up on Google may or may not be a good thing. It totally depends on what you're scheming.

billsfan2012 said:

I can't think of anything else... I did not make any changes to the websites during this time... no updates... no backlinks... no layout modifications... nothing but a few pics on pinterest.

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What about 30 days prior? It can take up to 30 days, sometimes even longer, for something you do on or off site to have an effect.

Also G could have simply caught a red flag unrelated to Pinterest, that can happen at anytime, and if they add up, you drop.

BlackHatWidow said:

The links are nofollow. Check yourself.

Go to a page with a pin. CONTROL U in Firefox for source code. Search for "nofollow"

BINGO

Links are nofollow.

You can now go back to searchengineland.com and set them straight.

=======================

Your pins showing up on Google may or may not be a good thing. It totally depends on what you're scheming.

Click to expand...

In the description, you put the name of your site (or store in my case) and the link without the "http." There will not be a clickable link, therefore, there will not be a no follow code. However, the robot picks it up as people in social media talking about you. Watch how fast your popularity in the serps goes up. It's no different than utilizing a free press release where your links are not clickable. It makes no difference that your links are not clickable. It is excellent google juice because you are considered popular and important.

Remove the Pinterest links and do some proven link building and see what happens.

I am personally straying from Pinterest for other reasons... G+, FB, and Twitter are still the only networks I see worth playing with.

Instagram looks to be ripe for picking, but I haven't had time to exploit it yet.

redrubies said:

In the description, you put the name of your site (or store in my case) and the link without the "http." There will not be a clickable link, therefore, there will not be a no follow code. However, the robot picks it up as people in social media talking about you. Watch how fast your popularity in the serps goes up. It's no different than utilizing a free press release where your links are not clickable. It makes no difference that your links are not clickable. It is excellent google juice because you are considered popular and important.

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If your image doesn't show up in
pinterest.com/source/mywebsite.com
pinterest.com/source/mywebsite.com?page=2
pinterest.com/source/mywebsite.com?page=3
pinterest.com/source/mywebsite.com?page=4
pinterest.com/source/mywebsite.com?page=5
pinterest.com/source/mywebsite.com?page=6
pinterest.com/source/mywebsite.com?page=7
pinterest.com/source/mywebsite.com?page=8
pinterest.com/source/mywebsite.com?page=9

then you are dodging the bullet.

I've been trying to clean up my backlinks some and I found a lot coming from Pinterest with little traffic. I don't see much benefit from the backlinks, especially with recent Google changes.

What I did is add pinterest.com to my disavow file. Not that I really believe that will really do anything. I also found a Wordpress plugin that allows you to block Pinterest sitewide.


Or you can just add this metatag