Sellers Take Note: Bing Promotes Pinterest Boards
By Ina Steiner
EcommerceBytes.com
October 03, 2013
Online sellers are always quick to capitalize on marketing opportunities, and Pinterest is no exception. When EcommerceBytes wrote about the visual social networking site in February 2012, we found sellers had already begun embracing Pinterest, and since then, research has proven Pinterest is a driver of traffic to ecommerce websites and product listings.
Sellers who have invested time on Pinterest may be able to capitalize on a new development: Microsoft's Bing search engine is now featuring Pinterest collections in "image" search results.
Bing uses its technology to surface pictures in its image search results, but said it recently noticed that the most interesting pictures on the web were being collected by people, not computers. "On sites like Pinterest, passionate curators can build up a collection of ideas that shows off their unique style. We started to ask ourselves, what if we could have the best of both worlds, combining the power of algorithms with the taste and judgment of real people."
On Wednesday, it announced it will now display Pinterest boards right alongside regular search results for image searches. (That's when you do a search on Bing and click on "Image" instead of the default "Web" tab.)
Bing explained, "Image collections are great for a search like Halloween decorating ideas, where we bring together cute pictures from around the web with creative collections by people who are passionate about decorating their house in the best way possible. Or try a search like updo hairstyles, where Image collections show you a variety of beautiful styles to get inspired from."
Unfortunately Bing did not provide tips on how to get your Pinterest boards featured on its "Image collections for Bing image search," but presumably having lots of boards with lots of followers help. Even if you can't get your board featured, your item could get exposure if featured on the board of a popular Pinterest user. (Pinterest optimization, anyone?)
Bing also makes it easy to "pin" images from Bing image searches to Pinterest with its "Pin to Pinterest" feature, launched in April.