I’ve been working with Bing, along with several other lifestyle and design bloggers, to help them understand our searching and social media habits. (When I mentioned being in Seattle last December, it was to visit the Microsoft headquarters.) Our focus group discussed some of the irksome technical aspects of blogging that we deal with, such as finding original sources for images. We all had plenty of love for Pinterest, but it can be frustrating to come across photos we’d like to incorporate, only to find that the source listed is a search engine.
Bing has worked to include the feedback from us bloggers, which led to (among other things) a ‘Pin to Pinterest’ option in their image search. You can search, using their image filters (by color, size, etc.), then pin directly from the results. The source will be credited, not just bing.com, and you can narrow down results to a specific site as well (e.g. site:makingitlovely.com).
It was interesting to be a part of the process. From a traffic standpoint, a search engine would benefit by acting as a middle-man and retaining their URL as the source. We bloggers though, as content creators, insisted that pinned images should go back to the original page and I’m glad to see that was implemented. It makes the feature more useful for us, and also for you and the Pinterest community as a whole. Hooray for making our internet lives a smidge easier!
This post was sponsored by Bing.
Jenna
April 16, 2013 at 4:48 pmKudos to Bing! This is an awesome forward step.
Vanessa
April 16, 2013 at 6:41 pmThat’s an amazing idea! One of the most frustrating parts of blogging, for sure. It’s also crazy how many people think Pinterest is a valid source, haha. (Frustrated laughter, not funny laughter. Sigh.)
Petite Peltier
April 17, 2013 at 8:38 amThats is so interesting and what an awesome opportunity to be a part of that! Thanks for sharing.
Miss B.
April 17, 2013 at 3:03 pmWonderful idea, you are a genius!
Making it Lovely
April 18, 2013 at 2:21 pmNot just me! The whole group worked really well together.
Ally S
April 18, 2013 at 8:37 amOf course, this only matters if you actually use Bing. Which most people don’t.
Mindi
April 18, 2013 at 6:33 pmThis is such a fantastic idea, and although bing is not my preferred search engine, I just may switch specifically for pinterest. My question, and maybe you’ll know the answer, Nicole: what about photos that have an “original” source of tumblr? Will it do some kind of metasearch and actually link back to the original content?
As a librarian, it drives me batty when I click on pinterest posts that link to a tumblr, only to find that absolutely no credit is given to the original source. Because of this, I often see something I like on pinterest, click on it, then desperately search for the original source and pin it myself…which defeats the purpose of pinning, really! (I honestly am not on pinterest much because of this) I’d love to hear what you know about this, if anything. Thank you (and thanks for letting me vent)!
Cheers,
Mindi
Ali B.
April 21, 2013 at 5:21 pmNow if only they could figure out a way to do the same for Pins by lazy Tumblr users.