Created vs Saved Pins, & Duplicate Pins

[ColsCreations]

Continued from here as that was the Tech forum where discussion is inappropriate.

A Created pin is either

1. a pin where the URL links to your claimed domain
2. a manually created pin where you upload the image/vid for it

“Created” pins are only a thing for Business accounts.

Created and Saved content
help.pinterest.com/en/business/article/publish-your-content

Why are my pins going to the Saved Tab instead of the Create tab?
How to claim your domain and send pins to your Created tab!
support.tailwindapp.com/en/articles/5025946-why-are-my-pins-going-to-the-saved-tab-instead-of-the-create-tab 

If you Google around, the consensus is that Pinterest does favor Created (& “Fresh”) pins but it goes a lot deeper than that. Here’s a super interesting article (I can’t vouch for  their credibility) that says the Pinterest algorithm is based on four main things - domain quality, pin quality, pinner quality, and topic relevance.
How Does the Pinterest Algorithm Work in 2024?
And this article Pinterest Best Practices For 2024 talks about duplicate pins

2. Can I send out duplicate posts?

Pinterest strongly favors fresh pins to duplicate ones and, moving forward, this trend will only get stronger.

The new algorithm will actually ensure that new content will benefit from better exposure, which means that this will be the content that will bring in better engagement.

_ At this time, duplicate pins are defined as pins with an exact image/URL combination that has already been Pinned to Pinterest before, by you or anyone else, on any board. _

While re-pinning is still allowed, as around 80% of Pinterest content is made up of re-pins, this will not be the best way to get good distribution and traffic to your website.

I was wondering about duplicate pins in another recent thread for a different reason, but this seems to confirm the notion that while we’d all love to have lots of affiliates pinning our stuff, that might actually be detrimental. If everyone is using the Share button that automatically links to the same product page and uses the same default product image … then yikes. In an effort to help others get exposure and maybe earn referrals in return, we’re actually creating a huge pool of multiple duplicate pins that might be hurting the exposure of all those like pins. On top of that, there are probably tens of thousands of Pins out there going to Zazzle and if not enough of them are getting clicks-through, then the domain quality (as mentioned in first article above) of Zazzle itself  suffers. Huh!

It really is sounding like the best way to pin, whether your own product or as affiliate for someone else’s, is to create the pin manually using a unique image and routing it first through a website/blog. That avoids it being a duplicate pin and helps not skew the “domain quality” of Zazzle overall which effects everyone.

*NOT an expert here, just my thoughts after some late-night reading.

[Nigel_Sutherland]

One thing I have detected is that manually created pins seem to get views and clicks in greater number and far more quickly than those created via the Zazzle share Pinterest button, many of which receive no views at all.

[Marcia_Luce]

@ColsCreations  Thank you so much for this invaluable info!!! I really appreciate you taking the time to explain & post this!

[GagCartoonist]

Unless things changed the more people pinning images from one’s own website the better and the more an image was pinned the more that image ranked. 

[ColsCreations]

Per the article I linked to above:

Just like Google’s search engine algorithm, Pinterest reviews the domain quality of the website linked to a pin. If users consistently click through a pin to your website and explore your content, the domain quality will increase. Essentially, the
more popular your website is on the platform, the more Pinterest will see it as a source of high-quality content and show it to even more users.

To me that says “domain quality” is not about the quantity pinned, it’s the click-throughs. So there could be tens of thousands of pins leading to Zazzle out there but if only a small percentage of them are actually getting people to click through I think that means that Zazzles “domain quality” suffers and therefore pins to Zazzle might not rank well and therefore get less exposure across the board. On the other hand, if you have your own website, make five pins to it and they all get click throughs that would be a 100% click-through rate. So pins linking to your own website could end up actually ranking higher per Pinterest algorithm then pins that link directly to Zazzle.

* Again, I am no Pinterest expert I’m just thinking out loud here.

[Malissa]

The quality of the domain is affected not only by click throughs, but by bounce rate as well.  So if you have a high click through rate, but they are clicking right back off the site it actually hurts the quality of the domain.  And the catch 22 with that is we WANT people to click through from our site back to Z to buy our product.  So essentially with a product pin that is routed to a middle man (your website) and then to a different site to purchase we are in a way hurting the quality of our website.  The ideal situation for that would be hosting your own products with a storefront right on your site so the customer stays to shop and buy.

[ColsCreations]

Oooh, great point! There’s a down-side to everything it seems

I never really understood what “bounce rate” meant. I always thought it was a measure of time spent on a site before moving on so a high bounce rate means people leaving it very quickly.  But this says it’s very specifically if they are performing any other actions on your page:

Obviously that effects time spent on site so it’s all very intertwined I guess. But this really helps explain why so many shopping sites, including Zazzle, have “landing pages” and/or other means of making you click to view more info about the product. Also all the “other designs you might like” and “things other people bought” etc type panels. People still may not stick around long but technically they wouldn’t be a “bounce” as they’ve triggered another action on your site. I think. Also might explain the push for videos. You have to click to activate them, and even a short 30-second one means 30 seconds more someone is spending on your site to watch it. This could also apply to the maze the new collection PODS are on the product pages. Instead of being able to go straight to a collection page, give it a glance, and leave/x-out, you’ve got to navigate the product type, styles, view more products sections … 
Very interesting. It’s as if sites are intentionally hard to navigate in order to keep you around longer, clicking this or that trying to find what you want. Hmm.

[Malissa]

I also thought bounce rate was the time spent on site, so clicking off (even through a link) would trigger a “bounce”.  So thanks for the info.  It’s all so much to absorb. 😂

Also, lots of food for thought about these “tricks” to encourage more time on site.  

[GagCartoonist]

Customers take less than 2 seconds before they decide whether they are hanging around. They ‘bounce fast’. I bounce when I see moving parts banners, popups and ads.

Having a busy page is not conducive to people hanging around. Though yes cross-sell and related products is (in moderation) can keep them around ‘clicking’. Other things that get users to perform actions can be things such as ‘continue reading’ and then linking to another page. Or asking them to take part in a poll. One can also have a feature to view feedback which requires an action/link. Or to leave a review etc, sign up for a newsletter. 

High bounce rate can also be affected by slow page-load, low resolution images, distracting popups, unrelated content. Not getting to the ‘point’ quickly …not being clear what the site is about etc.

[JimCarnicelli]

Great explanation. And right on just about everything. We face this issue with Snuggle Hamster Designs too. Here’s our article explaining how to claim ownership of your SHD stores on Pinterest. A couple hours ago one of our new users was asking about this. She noticed that when she tried creating her own pin, it showed our brand instead of her own:

All she needed to do was register her agency with Pinterest and it shows her own brand (user display name).

This gets to an interesting behavior of Pinterest’s. When it recognizes a registered website like SHD (or Zazzle), it doesn’t matter how many people “create” pins pointing to it. It’ll rebrand them with the site owner’s identities instead of the people who pinned them. And that’s why they appear to just be “saved” instead of “created”.

And yes. Pinterest does make a big deal about the difference. During beta testing quite a few of our users tried our our SM post stuff and did notice a big difference when they registered their agencies with Pinterest versus before that. More views. More visibility.

[JimCarnicelli]

Good point about bounce rate. Something to consider though. How can Pinterest find out your bounce rate? Once you leave their site they cannot follow you. The only thing they can do is detect if you come back to Pinterest shortly after leaving Pinterest and assume that counts as a bounce. But let’s say you clicked on a link to one of your products on Snuggle Hamster Designs and then clicked on the “Shop at Zazzle” link to go to Zazzle. Presumably you’ll be there a little while. Pinterest would know they sent someone to SHD. But they would not know that someone went from SHD to Zazzle.

Pinterest probably has a simple threshold expressed in seconds. I’d speculate it’s 10 seconds for example. If the user comes back in under that amount of time then they’d call it a bounce.

This is my best guess as to how Pinterest might mine our session data to help determine domain quality.

[ColsCreations]

I bounce when I see moving parts banners, popups and ads.

Same. But add those flash intro screens.

Having a busy page is not conducive to people hanging around.

Agreed! I always wish Zazzle would usethis as their home page. It’s so simple and to-the-point and easy to navigate.

 Other things that get users to perform actions can be things such as ‘continue reading’ and then linking to another page.

Oh, I hate that one and it even happens on our About sections here. But now I’m understanding why sites do this.

[ColsCreations]

Good point about bounce rate. Something to consider though. How can Pinterest find out your bounce rate? Once you leave their site they cannot follow you.

Ay-Yi-Yi! You are of course correct. Pinterest wouldn’t know the bounce stats for all the sites pins link out to so it couldn’t be one of their metrics in determining “domain quality”. I was so lost in thinking about why sites might make you jump through hoops that that basic logic escaped me. This is why these forums are so valuable, we can all “think out loud” together and pool it into something more cohesive.