Pinterest 'Shop this Look' and other Oddities

[ColsCreations]

Continued from here as we were spinning off the original topic.

It came up not too long ago that some of us have the option to add other products to our main pin, and they turn out as “shop this look” items displayed together on the pin page. I had this option years ago but the means of creating such was different. Now, it’s labeled as “tag products” on the pin creation page.

Have been unable to figure out why some people have this option and some don’t but we were able to rule out it being a difference between having a Personal or Business account, or the domain the link you enter goes to as for me, the Tag Products option is there before I even enter a link or any other pin info besides an image to start the pin.

This is a manual pin I made back in 2021 where I used the option to add other products. On this one, the main pin links to my own claimed domain. The additional “tagged products” link directly to Zazzle product pages. I see the Shop this Look items when viewing on both my computer and the Pinterest app on my phone. And I didn’t notice until now that when I took this screenshot in Nov, the pin did not have a Visit Site button.

Here’s my most recent pin, from Nov 3.  Another manual pin, but this one, the main pin links directly to the Zazzle product page, as do the “tagged products” I added. I see the Shop this Look items when viewing on both my computer and the Pinterest app on my phone. And as above, I didn’t notice until now that when I took the screenshot in Nov there was no Visit Site button on the pin.

But as @LMGildersleeve just reported, she’s not seeing the Shop this Look items at all when she views that pin. So that’s weird. What’s weirder is she has this pin  that is showing Shop this Look items that she didn’t add, and for me, there is no Visit Site buton, and not even a pin title.

On a slightly different note, I made two comments on this pin but since it is attributed to Zazzle and not LMGildersleeve, I am curious as to whether she gets notified by Pinterest of engagement on that pin or not.

As @karab said in the other thread, Pinterest is always changing things up. Seems like hitting ourselves in the head with proverbial hammer trying to figure out the method to their madness. I don’t do much pinning myself but sometimes it’s tempting to try and ‘crack the code’.

[Amanda23]

Hello, when I visit your 2021 pin above, I have both the “shop the look” option as well as “visit site.”

I will look at when I created my CtrlZ business account, but I also have the option to tag additional items. I haven’t used Pinterest much, so it’s certainly nothing to do with my status. Lol

[Amanda23]

I created the account in March of 2022. I also checked your backpack pin, and both the tagged products and visit site button are present!

[Sara_H]

@ColsCreations  

Could it be that you get ‘shop the look’ when you enable the ‘show similar pins’ option when you manual create the pin?

I have that option turned off in my profile settings.

and the only ‘shop the look’ I have is the one url to my zazzle product that I added under the ‘tag products’

the actual url I used was to the collection (the grey visit site) was in the ‘add a link’ box

https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/522910206753282258/

it’s all changed since I last pinned anything.

[LMGildersleeve]

@ColsCreations I do have the notifications of two comments.

[ColsCreations]

Hmmm. That’s a possibility. When I create a pin, the option to “show similar products” is enabled by default and I leave it on as that’s what’s Pinterest is all about, creating that rabbit hole of other like things you may want to look at it. I’ll have to poke around my general account settings to see if there is an option for globally enabling/disabling similar pins.

[ColsCreations]

It took a lot of hunting around to find my general Settings options on Pinterest but finally found it. There IS an option to set 'show similar products" on or off at account level.

But after turning it off, I am still getting the option by default to “tag products” on new pins.

[Sara_H]

@ColsCreations   yes you should be. I was thinking by turning it off, if would stop other ‘shop the looks’ invading the pin space as in the Walmart link in your image (last one) and give you more control in tagging more of your zazzle products in there - i.e from the collection perhaps? (by using ‘use a link’ in the 'tag products tab)

and as you can see -“A product Pin will be automatically created and tagged in your Pin.” so is a product pin better than a non product pin?

I think the tag products is a new thing - like I said. It’s ages since I pinned a manual pin (slaps wrist). Perhaps it’s a way of getting business owners to pay for promotion as when I hover over mine - I get a huge red ‘promote’ box

and when I log in a huge banner about advertising.

Really pushing pay to play

[karab]

Pinterest tends to roll out changes to different accounts over the course of time, and it will take them literally years to get it all flipped on to everyone. They also don’t make every feature available to every country. Just saying that’s one reason why some people see things that others don’t.

I stopped trying to figure out the tagging thing. Some pins have the shopping bag icon on them and you can tap that to tag your own pins and attach them to that pin so that they show up as a “shop the look” thing. If you do that it won’t show related products that aren’t yours, but they also don’t show related products if you have a product catalog uploaded to Pinterest. We can’t upload a Zazzle catalog to prevent them from showing other products since Zazzle owns their own catalog, so turning the suggested products off at the account level is one way to prevent other things from being shown. On the other hand, there’s debate about whether Pinterest limits the spread of pins if you turn that off or not.

Someone in my Pinterest group also said that she can tag things to her pins in the app but not on desktop. I can tag things on desktop but I don’t use the app that much so I’m not sure about that. It’s based on what your account has access to. I have four Pinterest accounts and they all behave a little differently, so trying to figure it out is usually not worth the time.