Can you control pinterest's "find image" results?

Question

Rather than add Pin It buttons through our site, I would like to simply control what images show up in Pinterest's "Find Image" results if a user decides to pin one of our URLs.

As of now, "Find Images" allows the user to scroll through the images it finds on the page so they can select which image to pin. The "found" images start with the first jpg in the html file, I'm assuming (could that be a bad assumption??). On our site, this forces a user to scroll through about 15 navigation and promotion images before arriving at the featured product image. Is there any way to specify this image to show first in those results? Maybe through a meta tag, or by adding a class or id to the element?

Without a public Pinterest API, this seems like just guesswork, but I wanted to see if anyone else has run into this, or solved this. Thanks.

Dey

Answer 1

A lot of search results including the Pinterest Help Center talk about using nopin in HTML elements, which is invalid HTML. What they don't document is a data attribute to the same (well formed) effect.

<img src="foobar" data-pin-nopin="true" />

Erickericka

It's not the same, those data-* attributes unfortunately don't work when sharing from pinterest.com, they only work with the widgets/extensions e possibly apps. – Shushan

Answer 2

Adding the nopin attribute will exclude the image from appearing on Pinterest:

<img src="..." nopin>

Cohlier

Answer 3

I solved this by simply loading the image before all others in the page. In this case, I gave it width="0" and height="0" (you could also give it style="position: absolute; left: -9999px; top: 0;" just to be sure).

This won't break the page layout, but will force Pinterest to find this image first. The only downside is that the browser will load the page a few milliseconds slower, but if you're reusing this image later in the page anyway, you should make up for lost time then.

Dey

I'm working on a site that displays huge images as backgrounds (I need background-size: cover) but Pinterest doesn't pick up background images so I used this trick. As an aside I'm using visibility: hidden instead of your absolute positioning solution, I'm more comfortable with it and it works just fine. – Lalonde

Answer 4

• Pinterest will find any images from <img> tags (it will ignore CSS background images) that are at least 80px x 80px.
• The order the images show up on in the Pinterest list is determined by the order they are specified in the HTML.
• As you have discovered, you can alter the CSS of an image to "hide it" without actually hiding it by either moving it off the page with absolute positioning or 0 height and width. Any images that are set to display: none will not be picked up by Pinterest.

Coquina

Answer 5

You can instruct the share preview to only grab specific images from the page by using the “image_include” configuration option. First, set image_include to your desired class name (id selectors are not allowed, only class selectors), then add that same class name to each of the images on the page that should be grabbed. For image_include, don’t add the ‘.’ selector. Here’s an example:

<script type="text/javascript">
var addthis_config = {
image_include: "at_include"
}
</script>

Once image_include has been defined with a class, add that class to the desired images on the page. In this example, the only images on the page that will be grabbed, will be the images with the at_include class (img1.jpg and img3.jpg).

<img src="http://www.example.com/img1.jpg" class="at_include" />
<img src="http://www.example.com/img2.jpg" />
<img src="http://www.example.com/img3.jpg" class="at_include" />

Idell

Answer 6

I was reading this blog which suggests the following:

1. Use the global no pin flag to prevent pinning on the whole site
2. Manually add the Pin It widget to those images you want to make pin-able.

Given Pinterest's webmaster tools appear to only have a blacklist, rather than a whitelist option (that you are seeking), this could be a possible solution. Another stated benefit of this is you can also supply suggested pin text through the Pin It widget.

Only downside to this I guess is that it may break the user's own Pin tools. Pinterest does allow you to supply a custom "denied" message, so I guess you can say "please use our site's pin buttons directly".

I've tried this, and it works. It seems like a decent approach, at least until Pinterest sees fit to add some better tools, such as an image whitelist option. The main drawback is needing to add Pin-it buttons on every image you want to enable for your users & your users may be annoyed that they can't pin anything.

Fennelly

Answer 7

Unfortunately, there is no way to mark several images on your page as preferred, but you can mark one image to stay at the top of your images when someone pin it. Specify this meta-tag in <head>:

<meta property="og:image" content="http://YOUR-DOMAIN.com/IMAGE.jpg"/>

I have not found official confirmation for this feature, but it works great with addthis sharing plugin.

Acton

I can confirm that Pinterest uses the resource linked as og:image. I'm not sure though if this is always the case, or if it only happens when the "pin it" form is opened in a dialog or popup window. – Maccarthy

Answer 8

Add this script before the actual call to pinterest. And set images that you do not want to show with a class called 'nopin'

                <script type="text/javascript">
                var addthis_config =
                {
                    image_exclude:'nopin' 
                }
                </script>               
                        <div id="toolbox" class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style">
                        <a class="addthis_button_facebook_like" fb:like:layout="button_count"></a>
                        <a class="addthis_button_tweet"></a>
                        <a class="addthis_button_tumblr"></a>
                        <a class="addthis_button_pinterest"></a>                                                 
                    </div>
                </div>

Tuscarora

Answer 9

If anyone is using AddThis, please check this thread: http://support.addthis.com/customer/portal/questions/1570789

AddThis has some, uh, unique functionality that affects the image picker presented. As in, when there is only one image on the page, it ignores the defined og:image.

If you set that lone image to be excluded, then the image picker won't show any images for selection.

Misfit