How We Research Pinterest®

Every study in the Pinfluencing.com Pinterest® research series is built on the same foundation: real, large-scale Pinterest search data that we collect, clean, and analyze ourselves. This page explains how we gather it and how to read what we find.

Where the data comes from

We capture how pins actually rank in organic Pinterest search. For a given keyword we record which pins appear and in what position (rank 1 is the top), reading the default logged-out, unpersonalized results so the picture reflects the public search experience rather than any single account’s feed. We look at organic placements only and exclude promoted or paid pins.

Each result is captured in two passes: first the rank and the pin’s identity, then a second pass that fills in the pin’s description, alt text, board, and the account’s follower count. Our research database already spans tens of millions of organic search results across roughly 1.3 million searches, and it keeps growing as we cover more keywords.

What we measure

• Search position (rank, 1 = top)
• Keyword match in the title, description, alt text, and board name
• Hashtag presence in the description
• Title and description character length
• Account follower tier (under 1K, 1K to 10K, over 10K)

How to read our findings

Three things to keep in mind. First, everything here is correlational, not causal: we can show that pins with the keyword in the title tend to rank higher, not that adding one will lift a specific pin. Second, we measure ranking only, not engagement; we do not have clicks, saves, or impressions, so “better” always means “ranked higher,” nothing more. Third, we control for follower size where it matters, because larger accounts tend to rank better for reasons unrelated to the thing we are testing.

The studies built on this data

Should You Use Hashtags on Pinterest?; Where Should You Put Your Keyword on Pinterest?; Does Pinterest Alt Text Length or Keywords Matter?; Is There an Ideal Pinterest Description Length?.

Referencing this research? Please credit Pinfluencing.com and link to this page.