That perfectly describes my usage of Pinterest.

People have written browser extensions to remove Pinterest from search results, as it is almost always a dead-end

Maybe to you, but my wife uses Pinterest a ton. It is where a lot of the women I know go to for ideas for just about everything, from house decor to even the ideas for our wedding.

Pinterest is useful just not for us nerdy guys. I am not sure why Google keeps it though or how they benefit, unless Pinterest uses AdSense exclusively, then one can determine that its some sort of partnership. You would think Google would be smarter about who to send over to Pinterest if thats the case.

They are referring to how they link out their images and SEO content that ultimately one will find unusable & frustrating.

I have experienced this many times when looking for a specific image on Google Images, I will click on the link that goes to Pinterest only to find the image is not there.

IMO this is more a Google problem than a Pinterest problem. Google does the same thing with text search (returning results that have few if any of your search terms), possibly over relying on opengraph tags and other such metadata.

Pinterest did this on purpose, for traffic, and have maintained it for many years now. If either company saw it as a problem, it wouldn't be.

...and yet whenever Google deprioritizes over emphasis on SEO, Pinterest never seems to go away... Is it some sort of partnership they have that keeps Pinterest so prevalent? Or did Google one day just decide to promote Pinterest more, I'm sure they promote Facebook and other social media site results too.

I concur. It's such a pain to go back and requote random words in my query on every search because Google decided it knew what I wanted better than I do.

It's one thing to use Pinterest intentionally, a whole other to have it shoved down your throat.

Where / How are you finding Pinterest links?

I've just searched about two years of browser history and i haven't landed their once.

> Where / How are you finding Pinterest links?

Google, I google anything and they show up (ESPECIALLY IMAGES). Blacklist one domain in search? Don't worry they've got 200 other ones.

I ended up doing a wildcard blacklist with uBlacklist

?? That just means you haven't clicked on the links. Of course the pollution will not be represented in your browser history.

Nobody is saying they are forced to visit the site.

Are you using Google Images? Because thats the main culprit.

I am not, that might explain it.

Not sure exactly why/when the switch over happened but Bing has dominated Google for image and video search for years.

They've infested Google's image search for years.

As someone who uses Pinterest for its intended purpose, like home decor inspiration, fashion ideas, etc.. It’s actually very nice! It’s structured like a moodboard, a format that fits me nicely whenever I‘m looking for ideas… However! Even though I enjoy and use Pinterest, it’s never what I want to see in Google Images. If I need to find the artist of a drawing for example, Pinterest is often spammed to me in the results, often with a link leading to absolutely nowhere. Usually the Pin is locked behind a login, which is annoying since I only use the app on my phone. There’s tons of reasons to dislike Pinterest on Google, it’s not just a dichotomy between nerds and women (not to mention that these groups have overlap anyway, of course).

> It is where a lot of the women I know go to for ideas for just about everything, from house decor to even the ideas for our wedding.

So much for the idea that men are more "vision-oriented" than women.

Or allow convenient usage without registration. It seems whatever I look for mostly is there, I just go away because I don't want to sign-up&in nor be tracked. I wouldn't realy mind if there were some reasonable non-intrusive content-relevant ads though.

I probably might even sign-up some day if I weren't repelled by this being required every time I come. I even stopped reading Quora, and, most recently, Twitter because of this - they started requiring signing-in while I don't want to stay signed in and be tracked even though I actually have respective accounts.

Why on earth would they do that? It’s intentional and drives growth for them