Pinterest® Research

Pinterest® research with real data behind every claim.

Most Pinterest advice is written from opinion. Ours is written from data. Every claim on this page is backed by our own Pinterest research data – the same real data that powers Pinfluence Discover – not guesswork, and not recycled tips from years ago.

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The research, now live.

Real data behind every claim. Click any study below to read the full breakdown.

Do Rich Pins Help You Rank on Pinterest®? We Compared 293,000 Pins

We compared 293,169 pins with Pinterest page data across 700,016 search results. Recipe and product Rich Pins sit 14 to 16 positions above comparable website pins; article Rich Pins sit 5 above, and in half of all niches no higher at all.

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Are There Really Banned Words on Pinterest®? We Tested 11,761 of Them

We scored 146 ‘banned words’ and then every word on 2,000+ ranking pins, 11,761 in all, across 61.8 million Pinterest search results. The folklore list is harmless. Advert vocabulary, platform names and pasted recipe cards are what track lower.

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Why Did Pinterest Remove Your Account From Search? We Tested 416 Sites

We live-tested 416 website-pinning accounts. The ones Pinterest removed from search share a profile, not a behavior. Here is how to check whether the limit is on your account or your website.

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How Many Pinterest® Pins Are Stolen? We Checked 69 Million Images

1 in 6 ranking images exists as more than one pin, about 1 in 100 has been re-pinned with someone else’s link, and when that happens the original wins the search slot only 45% of the time.

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Do You Need a Big Following to Rank on Pinterest®?

Accounts under 1,000 followers publish 80% of what ranks on Pinterest and hold 80% of the top-10 spots. We checked 103 million ranked pins to see whether follower count moves ranking at all.

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Do Emoji in Your Pinterest® Pins Help You Rank?

Emoji do not move Pinterest ranking: description emoji slightly hurt, the sparkles emoji rules the usage chart, and opening your title with an emoji does nothing. 128 million results checked.

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Where Do Pinterest® Pins Link, and Does It Affect Ranking?

Only 45% of pins carry a link. Instagram is the #1 destination in every niche yet ranks worst, and marketplaces rank best. We analyzed roughly 100 million pins to find out why.

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Does Your Pinterest® Pin Format Affect Search Ranking?

Idea pins punch above their weight, video ranks worst (largely Instagram reposts), and the best format flips with your follower count. Keywords still matter more.

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Do Older Pinterest® Pins Still Rank in Search?

Pinterest search is not a recency feed: about 4 in 10 top-ranking pins are over a year old, and 5-to-7-year-old pins rank nearly as well as brand-new ones.

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Is There an Ideal Pinterest Description Length?

No magic length. The popular 220 to 232 characters showed no advantage; the longest ranked slightly best.

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Does Pinterest Alt Text Length or Keywords Affect Your Ranking?

Pinterest writes alt text for 99.6% of pins. Length does nothing for ranking; relevant keywords help.

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Should You Use Hashtags on Pinterest in 2026?

Across 128M search results, hashtags show no ranking benefit once follower size is held constant.

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Where Should You Put Your Keyword on Pinterest?

The biggest lever we found: the keyword in your title and description, and it holds at every follower size.

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Why we publish research.

A lot of the Pinterest advice still floating around was written five or ten years ago, and the platform has changed a lot since then. People keep repeating those old tips as if nothing’s moved.

We publish these studies for one simple reason: to show what the data actually says today, not what it said years ago. Each one is built on our own up-to-date Pinterest research data, so you’re working from what’s true now.

Want to run the same kind of analysis on your own niche? Pinfluence Discover’s Free Forever tier gives you free daily keyword searches. No credit card required.