Nearly half of Pinterest users are from abroad. The revelation may come as a surprise to small business owners and other marketers that have been under the impression that they were targeting a primarily domestic audience. The report comes from Marketing Land.
Pinterest recently crossed the big boys line — 100 million monthly active users. And though that’s still well behind Facebook’s 1.5 billion and Instagram and Twitter’s 300 million plus users, Pinterest has been making its case as a true competitor and a “must consider” marketing platform.
In an effort to expand its reach and improve the experience of Pinterest users, the company has unveiled the localized search experience — a new development that’s geared towards global expansion.
Rui Jiang, Pinterest’s engineering manager, says that the company has identified Pinners from Germany, France, Japan and Brazil who save various local pins on the photo sharing network. This has inspired the idea of localizing the platform’s search functionality.
“Now that there are all these international Pins to discover, we wanted to make it easy for locals to find the best Pins being saved in their own country. So we’ve made some improvements to how search works wherever people use Pinterest,” said Jiang.
The introduction of Pinterest localized search is designed to make it easier for international Pinners to easily find local pins that are more relevant and familiar.
Pinterest localized search results will rely on what’s trending in a country. So when someone in Brazil, for instance, searches football or “futbol,” they will get more locally relevant results than someone who searches for the same item in the U.S.
Pinterest is also adding search suggestion and spell-check to its platform in several languages — French, German, Japanese and Portuguese to start.
“Based on what we’ve seen so far, these new improvements are already helping our international Pinners find what exactly they’re looking for. Across Brazil, France, Germany and Japan, people are finding and Pinning twice as many local Pins when they search.” said Jiang. “So we’re really looking forward to seeing what these improved search results do for Pinners in all our other countries.”
The San Francisco-based company estimates that the new Pinterest localized search will help attract more international Pinners. The new functionality should also make it easier for marketers to target Pinners in specific international communities.
Pinterest Image via Shutterstock
Aira Bongco
I loved Pinterest. It looks like it is US dominated but I guess I am mistaken. I guess it appeals more to people from other countries. But I guess it is very popular to people who are based in Europe.