I don't see why Pinterest does this to themselves. My main exposure to them is through Google image search and links to their site.<p>So my first several experiences were like this. It left me with a terrible first impression. It makes me wonder if the whole site plays games and tries to waste my time.<p>I usually don't sign up for an account the first few times I encounter a site, so in my mind it's a pretty critical time to make a good impression. Instead they annoyed me so much I've practically decided never to create an account.
They seem to have gone to a lot of trouble to insert themselves between the site users visited intentionally to find what they were looking for (Google), and the site that actually provided what they were looking for.<p>They've essentially become a large MITM attack on Google Image results.<p>Edit: just tried a few arbitrary search strings on Google Images, it seems improved compared to the past few weeks/months, somewhat.<p>For some searches, Pinterest results didn't appear at all. For "esp8266 enclosure", only 1 out of 15 on the "front page" points to Pinterest, but the original image is still from Tindie, not Pinterest. The person who supposedly pinned that image describes themselves as "Creative Digital Marketing, Web designer, WebDev, crazy SEO".<p>Ok, maybe a real pin from a real person, <i>maybe</i>.<p>Then I decided to see what happens with a handful of more "NSFW" search terms. The number of Pinterest results varied but significantly increased overall.<p>For some terms, in the 3 rows of images visible without scrolling, there were 19 images, and 11 of them (57%) pointed to Pinterest. None of them were images originally posted on Pinterest, they all have a hover link to the original site.<p>However, even though Pinterest is providing a link to the original site on top of the image, clicking it doesn't always take you there.<p>A good bit of the time, Pinterest has chosen to redirect you to a "blocked site" page instead, and only <i>after</i> they have already displayed an image from a site that they deemed "inappropriate". And then shortly afterward a giant popup prompting the user to login or create an account filled the screen.<p>[1] (safe for work) <a href="https://i.imgur.com/XuOvwvi.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/XuOvwvi.jpg</a>
It should, but this also illustrates a problem with Google Search that they'll need to grapple with in the future. Namely, that while they should treat all sites equally, in practicality there's not really much incentive to on their part.<p>Think about it. Let's say Google does remove Pinterest altogether, banning the site as a punishment for 'gaming' the system.<p>What then? The people that do search for Pinterest will find it missing, and likely assume Google screwed up/their search engine is broken. They won't know Google banned the site or what for, they'll just think 'Pinterest should be coming up, it isn't, so Google is broken'.<p>And I suspect that underpins a lot of instances where Google gives larger more popular sites and services a slap on the wrist for using black hat SEO. Google knows that if they really did treat them 'equally', then the average Joe would think Google's search engine was a broken mess because it doesn't bring up what they expect it to.<p>However, on the flip side by not banning them or punishing them, you get stuff like this where it seems like large sites are allowed to break rules with impunity and smaller ones are hit with the banhammer for a single offence. It's an interesting conundrum.
While they're at it please remove Yelp. The page that comes up on mobile does not appear to be the one Google indexes. It only shows the first sentence of a few reviews. Clicking Read More or More Reviews bounces you straight to the Google Play Store to install the Yelp app.
While they are at it please remove LinkedIn. You can't actually view anything on any page without logging in. Why is it listed at all? Seems pretty deceptive to me.
In days of old it was pretty easy to ban a site from your Google search results. It looks like they have removed that function.<p>I wonder why? I know I liked having certain low value (to me) sites not clutter up my results.<p>A little article about the feature, sorry it is going to try to throw an interrupting DIV at you– <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-block-sites-feature-146409" rel="nofollow">https://searchengineland.com/google-block-sites-feature-1464...</a>
I used to use Pinterest regularly. It was a good way to capture ideas and share them with others. Now I cringe whenever I accidentally click on a Pinterest link. The product is dead to me, there is zero chance I'd ever willingly install or open the app.<p>It's strange to see what was originally a useful tool turn into well-funded SEO spam.
A complicating factor in all of this is the unfolding anti-trust cases against Google and other large digital platforms (see: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-against-google.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-against...</a>). Choices that Google might have once made to improve search results for users are now under extra regulatory scrutiny. I imagine Google executives would be very careful about making any moves that could be cast as freezing out competition, even if that competition is abusing Google's platform.
The most infuriating case is the reverse-image search. When I use reverse search for an image I'm trying to find a source or a complete version or context for an image flying about on social media.<p>And what I get is often a solid wall of Pinterest hits providing zero info.
I search for a lot of DIY stuff and frequently the image search results are on pinterest. Often the underlying link is shown as pinterest and not the original link (presumably because someone saved it from pinterest instead?) and I can't figure out the fucking original site.<p>Pinterest in search results is awful garbage, it seems.
To me the simplest solution would be to add 'Stop showing domain' in the drop down arrow under where they currently have 'Cached' in search results. It would be useful to users and also help Google understand when a site is annoying a bunch of people.<p>...Or is this an opportunity for an extension someone wants ot build where you can select sites/domains and it auto injects somnething like -site:pintrest.com into all searches.
LinkedIn requires logging in because the Supreme Court rules they couldn't really stop us from scraping public profiles. Forcing us to login makes it easier for them to control who has access to what content.
Isn’t this the best practice for, like, everyone?<p>Name one social network that lets you view its content without a significant reg wall being displayed.<p>You can’t see a single tweet without logging into twitter.<p>Browsing Facebook? Good luck seeing past that login box that dominates half the browser screen.<p>Want information about a restaurant on Yelp besides its address? Better login.<p>Not sure why Pinterest is being singled out here.
I agree that it's quite annoying, but you can already remove it yourself from the search results by adding "-site:pinterest.com" in the query.
A few weeks ago I shared something very similar from r/Showerthoughts [1].<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16220638" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16220638</a>
> "I'm searching for a specific piece of technical hardware "<p>What specific piece of technical hardware shows up anywhere near the first page of results in Google that's from pintrest? I can't think of a single time I've seen pintrest in the search results and I search for various technical things all the time? Just curious since this surprises me. I thought pintrest was non technical stuff usually.
I say don't get rid of it but give me the option to remove it from my search. There's a bunch of sites I would rather not see in my search all the time. Yes, I know I can do a custom search but I'd be happy to have a "not see x domain in my search" option. If I remember right there were other search engines in the past that had the option.<p>Come on Google give me the option.
Some people in this thread are comparing the situation to that of news site paywalls and noting the recent change in google image search. I think there is something to the comparison and it highlights the fundamentally different opinions about the purpose of a search engine:<p>Users want a search engine to find information they are looking for.<p>Businesses and sites want a search engine to advertise which information they <i>could</i> provide - but <i>not</i> lead directly to the pieces of information in question.<p>I think it's worth to make this divide visible and start a discussion which kind of search engine we'd like to have.
There were some ways to block Pinterest continuous pestering for subscription, but it got annoying and rather than supporting a model I consider unfair to the users I removed them from my surfing list.<p>It should also be noted that most problems I read on the commentary here would be easily solved if Google re-enabled the discussion filter they conveniently removed years ago to prevent users to filter out commercial sites from their queries. That move was pure evil and thanks to it searching has become harder than before.<p><a href="https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/Psb6OmlLJTg" rel="nofollow">https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/Psb...</a><p><a href="https://www.seroundtable.com/google-discussion-search-dead-18854.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.seroundtable.com/google-discussion-search-dead-1...</a>
Here's what I use to remove bad results:<p><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist-by-goo/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...</a>
Googlers with the power to change things; if you're reading this you will make many people happy and return utility to google searches that currently end up with captive images and no context.
There's a problem bigger than Pinterest here: images AND any content that is not where Google expects them or can link to. The "infinite scrolling" fad contributes to this as there is no longer a page to link to. Google and Bing should penalize sites for making it difficult to link to specific images and content.<p>For example, they can create a "2 page down" rule. If it takes more than two presses of the Page Down button (or equivalent per mouse/finger) to see indexed content, then penalize their rank score.
what i'll never understand is "why a wall?"<p>why not just use a non-blocking banner at the bottom or top of the page? the only thing a wall does is piss people off since you are blocking the content that they came to see and it results in backlash like this? besides... isn't the whole pinterest model about getting exposure for the images that people post and getting people to sign up? i think that who ever is in charge needs to rethink what they are doing.
Just A Bookmarklet that removes fixed elements like annoying signup overlays:<p>javascript:(function()%7B(function () %7Bvar i%2C elements %3D document.querySelectorAll('body *')%3Bfor (i %3D 0%3B i < elements.length%3B i%2B%2B) %7Bif (getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position %3D%3D%3D 'fixed') %7Belements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%7D%7D%7D)()%7D)()
I have an account on Pinterest because I like the service but having to sign-in for the simplest of things surely bugs me. Sometimes I just want to see one image and I end up having to navigate a bunch of sign-in pages just to see something. Recently I've found myself skipping Pinterest pages just because of the hoop jumping that signing-in creates.
Meanwhile perhaps the Personal Blocklist by Google ads-on for Chrome can help?<p>Not sure if it works on image search also.<p><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist-by-goo/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...</a>
Been saying this myself for a while now and reporting Pintrest links when I can be bothered. Complete abuse of the system to use it as the top of their funnel and as usual people who advocate the service don't even realise it's doing this awful behaviour.
The way to exclude Pinterest from your search results, directly from the search box, is `-site:pinterest.<i>`. It excludes </i>all* Pinterest domains, but not other pages that mention it.<p>But I agree Pinterest should be completely removed by default.
Is there a Firefox extension that can remove Pinterest links from Google search results?<p>It really is infuriating when I click them and get a signin page over a bunch of images that seem to have no relation to what I searched for.
as a workaround, if you get very polluted results on a particular Google search, you can add the search term "-site:pinterest.com" without quotation marks to your query, thereby narrowly excluding it.
Another way to look at it is that you need Pinterest results in google image search in order to help finding content on Pinterest that infringes your copyright.
How many users does pinterest have? Is it popular and still growing? Why are they not going public yet?<p>I have never knowingly gone to Pinterest and so don’t know much about it.
/offtopic<p>I for one really dig Pinterest for my artsy hobbies.
It's like a internet-curated image search with some quality assurance.<p>Love it.
I hate this business model of using your audience to steal other sites content. Why doesn't Google link directly to the source of the content instead of Pinterest anyway? Maybe they don't care; they did invent AMP, which has some parallels with the way Pinterest works.<p>Anyway, when I started using DuckDuckGo on my phone to get away from AMP - I noticed that whenever I search for recipes on DuckDuckGo - they generally link to a site called Yummly which is even worse than Pinterest. Please complain to DDG about this if you care!<p>And speaking of searching on my phone, Apple won't even let me change the search engine string to use "encrypted.google.com" which would have gotten me Google results without the awful AMP links.<p>My point in rambling on about all these different topics is that none of these asshole corporations seem to want to let me have control over anything. I don't want to live like this. Generally, when I get annoyed, I just stop playing their game. At this point I have stopped watching TV and I have left Facebook, Twitter and Reddit and <i>I hope that you do too</i>.
Someone gave an example of searching for "IBM Leapfrog" and getting numerous Pinterest results.<p>I tried that search and only got one Pinterest result in the top 10.<p>I had no problem getting the text and images using a text-only browser. Could Javascript be the enabler for this Pinterest/Google annoyance?<p>Here is a quick little script to dump all the text from a Pinterest page; note how much is devoted to SEO and ads. .jpg URLs are wrapped in anchor tags for convenience.<p><pre><code> curl https://www.pinterest.com/pin/509469776569152019/ \
|exec tr '<' '\12' \
|exec sed 's/, \"/\
\"/g;s/{/\
/g;s/}/\
/g;s/\[/\
/g;s/\]/\
/g;/\":/!d' \
|exec sed '/ \"/!d;2s/^/<pre>/;
/\.jpg\"/{s/\"/<\/pre><a href=\"/3;
s/\"/\" style=margin:40px >viewjpg<\/a><pre>/4;};
$s/$/<\/pre>/' > 1.htm ;
firefox file:///1.htm ;
</code></pre>
With respect to LinkedIn, here is an amusing experiment to test the theory that your time means nothing to some web developers: Try signing up for a temporary account with a 10-minute email address from 10minutemail.com. LinkedIn will not inform you that this is an unacceptable email address. LinkedIn will proceed to show you Google ReCaptchas for at least 10 minutes, and perhaps longer.
It's just not good for the world that a single company controls a basic fundamental function of the internet. It needs fixing.<p>Google Search needs to be replaced by an open source decentralized system. And then users themselves can control which sites do well and which don't.
I don't see the problem here. The most popular sites are showing up in search results. Pinterest is a popular site. It seems like that's the way search engines are supposed to work.<p>If you don't like the fact that Pinterest is a popular site, fair enough -- but that's a personal opinion, and it's not a good enough reason for Google or any other search engine to suppress Pinterest images in search results.