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Pinterest Evolving Into A Personalized Search Substitute

Emerging model is a mobile-centric, visual search-discovery hybrid.

Greg Sterling on November 10, 2014 at 9:25 pm

This evening, at its San Francisco headquarters, Pinterest hosted a talk and Q&A session with the company’s head of engineering, Michael Lopp. No one from Search Engine Land was able to attend on short notice; however the company shared a number of updated stats.

Much more than a “scrap-booking” site (its origins) or even a product discovery or shopping site, Pinterest sees itself now as a kind of personalized search site that can blend search and discovery in new and compelling ways. As the graphic below indicates Pinterest thinks it can do a better job meeting certain kinds of needs and answering user questions than a traditional search engine (read: Google).

The company said that since launching “Guided Search” six months ago search volume per user has increased by 25 percent. The company also reiterated that 75 percent of all its traffic now comes from mobile devices. Pinterest also said that there are 30 billion Pins “in the system” and that this figure is growing by 25 percent each quarter.

Pinterest is available in 32 languages and has offices in five countries (US, UK, France, Germany, Japan and Brazil).

The company also took pains to dispel the idea that Pinterest is a “women’s site” (nothing wrong with that; women make 80+ percent of all household buying decisions in the US). It said that there’s a 50-50 user-gender split in markets such as India, Korea and Japan.

It further explained that a third of all sign-ups are men and that male usage is growing faster than the female population on the site. This makes sense given that males are a newer and smaller audience.

Finally, on the gender front, the company said that the number of active male users has doubled in the past year. It boasted that there are now “more men using Pinterest in the U.S. than read Sports Illustrated and GQ combined.”

For more on these data and for additional color, see Martin Beck’s Marketing Land post.

About The Author

Greg Sterling

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog, Screenwerk, about connecting the dots between digital media and real-world consumer behavior. He is also VP of Strategy and Insights for the Local Search Association. Follow him on Twitter or find him at Google+.