I've noticed this, too. Is this an intentional change? A long time ago our pin descriptions were used. Then it changed so that the generic product descriptions were used in their place. More recently it was back to our own pin descriptions and now it's the generic descriptions again.
I hope it goes back to using our own descriptions on pins. Can anyone from Zazzle give us the lowdown?
I don't do a whole lot of pinning but looking back tonight at my manual pins that link directly to a Z product page, I found that all the ones I looked at retain my own personal Description I added when pinning it, except one that Pinterest, through no action of my own, added all the product-preview thumbs from the Zazzle product page to.
Here's a normal manual pin from May 2023, just the one pic I added and my own description.
Now here's the one pin (also from May 2023) that Pinterest added the Z thumbs to, where my own description has been replaced by the Zazzle default.
Interestingly, when I click to Edit pin, my own description I had written is still what is in the Description field.
I long ago gave up trying to follow or understand why PInterest does what they do to pins. I pin a lot of non-Zazzle merchandise using the Pinterest share button in my browser, just to keep my account active and stats from totally tanking. Some of those pins turn into "shopping pins" (my own term) with thumbnails pulled from the product page and price, too. Others stay just as pinned. I have no idea why some are this way and some are that way.
Anyways, whatever they're doing with descriptions and pulling other product thumbs from Z, it has not affected the linked URL so my referral ID is still there on both.
UPDATE: looking at same pin today, it's reverted back to my own description, with just the one image I uploaded instead of importing all the the thumbs from Zazzle. That's good. I really dislike when it decides to import all the thumbs and you end up with the split-screen image views where you get like half of the next image in the view as in above screenshot of pin.
Maybe a better solution is to use Nifty to create a 1 or 2 slot product view animation and manually create a pin from it. Pinterest respects the title and any text you give, even though you do give the link to the product page.
The key is creating the pin manually - ie not using a pinit button. Another good thing about doing it this way is the pin goes into your Created section where Pinterest gives it much, much more exposure than Saved pins.
Yes. I made a manual test pin last night, specifically using a self-made cover image because I have a theory I'm trying to test out, and tonight, less than 24 hrs later, my description has reverted to Zazzle's even though my description still shows in the description field when you click to Edit pin.
I have some made from the share link that look like this:
using the generic description and with unrecognized fields/text (the little striped rectangles)
Any help appreciated. thanks!
