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The Internet

How Pinterest Utterly Ruined Photo Search on the Internet (inputmag.com) 141

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Beloved by moodboard aficionados and wedding planners alike, the platform is hated by rank-and-file web surfers. It's not that it doesn't have its purpose; it's just that it intrudes on the search experience of pretty much everyone who doesn't want to use it. From a report: More than 28,000 Chrome users have installed Unpinterested!, an extension to remove Pinterest from Google search results, while countless others trade tips on how to craft search queries to exclude the photo-sharing website. The problem? Pinterest makes it obnoxiously difficult to view any image hosted on its platform without signing up for an account. And it's managed to achieve an extremely strong presence on many popular image searches. This state of affairs creates friction in the image-grabbing process, which has been fine-tuned over the last 20 years to become as frictionless as possible. And it's all seemingly for the goal of boosting Pinterest user numbers. Pinterest, it should be noted, doesn't cost anything to sign up for. But as the old internet maxim goes, "If you're not paying for it, you are the product.'" Meanwhile, people who do use the service complain that the resolution of Pinterest images is often low.
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How Pinterest Utterly Ruined Photo Search on the Internet More

How Pinterest Utterly Ruined Photo Search on the Internet

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  • Meanwhile, people who do use the service complain that the resolution of Pinterest images is often low.

    True, but much like Wikipedia it's a jumping off point for further exploration, not a destination.

    • Re:It's the journey, not the stops. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by karlandtanya ( 601084 ) on Monday November 08, 2021 @12:04PM (#61968589)

      The problem with pinterest is there is no context.
      It's just an image from who knows where; no way to follow it up. As was said, their presence in search results has effectively spammed down any legitimate results to the point they are not useful.

      Pinterest contributes NOTHING to learning about the images; they did not create any of those images, they don't host them, they don't provide any way to follow them up. But google gives them priority as though they were the original authors.
      See the pretty pictures? Aren't they pretty? That's it.

      If pinterest is so awesome at organizing images and presenting them to people, Google should just stop indexing them altogether. If you want to make pinterest your image search engine, fine, great, sign up and use it.

      • OK they host them only enough that you can't tell where tf they are really from.
        Still detracting rather than contributing to the community's knowledge.

        the best rent-seekers get rents from *other* people's property.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        The same with Facebook - pics with no useful context.

      • Google has gotten so bad, it often does not even tell you which keywords it decided to cut from your search.

        Missing: Google Must include Google touted their AI searches and crap, but what Missing: Google Must include Google really did was grab random crackheads off the street to play Mechanical Turk.

    • Meanwhile, people who do use the service complain that the resolution of Pinterest images is often low.

      True, but much like Wikipedia it's a jumping off point for further exploration, not a destination.

      Wikipedia actively tries to maintain content and accuracy. Pinterest appears to make no effort to remove broken, false, or misleading links.

      Many times I search for a specific type of home project, they will show unrelated images in their page and hijack the results...or even worse, show an interesting picture, but link to content that doesn't relate at all.

      However, my biggest complaint is Pinterest usually appears above the source material in Google Search. Why do they deserve a cut for someone else

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Junta ( 36770 )

      Except if you are doing an image search, the *image search* should be the jumping off point. pinterest as linked from a google image search is low quality trash. I did an experiment and the sourc efor pinterest was... an different google image search result. Dead links and no way to find the image in context makes for a layer that removes information.

    • Sure, it's something like an evil, Wikipedia without informative text, that tries to take ownership of the content and keep you from accessing the original.

    • The problem with Pinterest is that it is a cancer. I've set up my Pihole to block its domain.

    • Sure, let's review the general experience when pinterest results shows up and push the other results into oblivion:

      • - 20 reposts of the same image withtout any name, source or context
      • - 20 reposts of the same image with slightly different resolutions and watermark added/removed randomly with the same context as before
      • - 20 reposts of the thumbnail of the original image with no source either

      There, you can now start your journey. Note that half the time I get pinterest results in google its when looking for cop

  • Couldn't you just do -pinterest.com on the search? (Score:5, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday November 08, 2021 @11:17AM (#61968433)
    not that it's not annoying when you forget mind you.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Yes, -pinterest along with all the other pollutants: -ebay -amazon and some others depending on what I am searching for. It would be nice if web browsers had an "exclude these sites" feature to make eliminating them more convenient.

      possibly with the opposite +amazon when you specifically want to include an otherwise unhelpful site

      • You can define a custom "search engine" which includes any other modifiers you want in its querystring.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by hawk ( 1151 )

        *this* is what I want--and specifically for YouTube.

        The proliferation of "how to" videos from twits that manage to hide the five seconds of information throughout five minutes of babble is, I suppose, impressive in some dark and warped way.

        But, for crying out loud, videos for the firing order of a V8 engine? The entirety of the information is a sequence of eight single digit numerals, yet they milk minutes out of it.

        And somehow, these dominate the first couple of pages of search results!

        • Amen to that. Every idiot tries to monetize information nowadays.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by redback ( 15527 )

            don't forget to like share and subscribe and click the bell icon to be harrased by useless notifications every time we post more of this garbage.

        • The proliferation of "how to" videos from twits that manage to hide the five seconds of information throughout five minutes of babble is, I suppose, impressive in some dark and warped way.

          One of the silliest videos I saw was how to set up real time audio synthesis on Linux. You get a video of a terminal screen, where you can't see what is going on, and don't have time to write it down. I dare say I could have paused the video, but why bother? I eventually found a text-only howto, so I could sit down and work out what it was doing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jowifi ( 1320309 )

        Check out the HOHSER [mozilla.org] Firefox plugin.

        It lets you hide (or highlight) specific sites in your search results.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jonadab ( 583620 )
        Amazon is very different from Pinterest. When you click on an image search result and it goes to Amazon, the page you get consistently A) has the image whose thumbnail you clicked on, and also B) the image has something to do with the other content on the page; frequently, the image is of the product that the page is about, so it has all the manufacturer specs and everything for it. This is *useful*.

        No one in the history of the universe has ever had that experience with Pinterest. People who get value ou

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by taustin ( 171655 )

      Apparently, having to type that extra 14 characters constitutes "ruining the internet" for some.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by henni16 ( 586412 )

      The problem I've had with that approach was that pinterest was (is?) also using a sh*tload of country-specific domains, which you have to exclude one by one since "-pinterest.*" doesn't work

    • I guess that's what the browser extension does, for unsavvy web searchers.

  • How about phone numbers? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CubicleZombie ( 2590497 ) on Monday November 08, 2021 @11:27AM (#61968457)

    Years ago I could search for an unknown phone number and if it was a business, I could find that business immediately. Often even for personal numbers. Now every result is a link farm that indexed every possible combination of numbers. Same with names. Link farms that indexed every possible name combination.

    And Google News should stop indexing paywalled sources.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Niche search engines like Duck Duck Go should make it easy to store search preferences, such as excluding or marking paywalls, Pinterest, and/or known or suspect link farms.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

      And Google News should stop indexing paywalled sources.

      Proposed compromise: Mark them accordingly - an icon, or color difference, or something like that.

      We are in a strange point in the web where sometimes you can find the same information paywalled -vs- ad supported. But sometimes the in-depth or more reliable coverage is paywalled. It will be interesting to see if both models survive. I fear people always using the ad-supported site, killing off the in-depth coverage sites or raising their prices so that most folks won't have access to them. People need t

    • Try to search a person's address and phone number, and all you get is sites with fake javashit loader/delay bars to make it look like it's busy searching all of these giant databases, and after you submit your e-mail address "we promise to never sell it honest (offensive term for Native American)!", then they demand your credit card, of course after all of those fake loading bars and the word "FREE!" plastered all over everything, including their ass.

      Of course, our flaccid government will ignore thi

    • Ohh, link farms.

      A friend of a friend was locked up at the Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women (tragic story which I will skip). My first move researching conditions there was of course a Google search. At or near the top was

      "Get reviews, hours, coupons and more for Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women!".

      There was considerable room for black humor about coupons for a prison.

    • And Google News should stop indexing paywalled sources.

      Note that you can tell Google News not to show stories from a given source. You have to do this on a per-source basis, but you only have to do it a dozen times to block nearly all of the paywalled content.

      I'd like to have a single setting to have it block all paywalled content that I'm not subscribed to, but that would require it to know what I'm subscribed to.

  • Google should ban them for lying (Score:3)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday November 08, 2021 @11:28AM (#61968461) Journal

    If you click on a photo that's allegedly on Pinterest, you often have to scroll several pages to find it. Google's ranking should favor short access. Either Pinterest is shuffling stuff over time to cheat, or Google isn't punishing anchor-free or scroll-happy sites.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      correction: ban them for cheating, not lying.

    • Missing: Google Must include Google does not really give a rats ass. If the public focus remains on this issue for 10 minutes instead of the usual 5, they might dial down on the Pintrest results until the public shuts up for a minute (to cover their own asses). And then Pintrest links will start showing back up on Missing: Google Must include Google's pages.

  • I have an interest in a certain realm of industrial history that created what are now collectible objects. Sadly, most images in crafts and collectibles seem to end up on Pinterest, and this bit of industrial history generated collectibles, most of whose images are now swallowed up inside the Pinterest event horizon.

  • On DuckDuckGo, at least, the site each result is from is quite obvious. So why not just skip over the Pinterest ones, if you’re so inclined?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      That's fine, if it's one or two of the results. For certain kinds of image searches, it's almost all of the results on the first few pages.

  • Not Pinterest Content (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Monday November 08, 2021 @11:48AM (#61968535) Journal
    Very little content on Pinterest is original. It's usually from another website. My biggest concern is when the Pinterest content is at the top of the search result, and the original content is way down the page.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      How fun it would be to run them into the copyright swamp.

    • I have a photography section on my website, and find that the Pinterest copies often are sometimes higher in search results than my originals. Indeed, a few times they have been appropriated by organizations (usually non-profits) for brochures and the like. Good thing that I'm not interested in "monetising" the pictures.

      Best wishes,
      Bob

  • Now that this is mentioned (Score:5, Interesting)

    by diffract ( 7165501 ) on Monday November 08, 2021 @11:49AM (#61968541)
    I do remember hating image search because it kept directing me to Pinterest. The reason I forgot about this was I switched to duckduckgo, which not only seems to exclude Pinterest from image search, but also posts a direct link to the image file instead of throwing you to a site where you may or may not find the image you're looking for. Google nust sucks for image search now

    • The one thing that DuckDuckGo lacks that keeps me going back to Google for specific searches, is proper handling of quote marks.

      If I search for

      widget "only with this phrase"

      then I should get zero results that lack "only with this phrase". DuckDuckGo can't quite believe that's what I want.

    • DDG does not exclude pinterest from its image search, in my experience.
      I'm running a browser plugin called pinterest-guest which allows me to see pinterest collections without the annoying popup, making it a bit less annoying.

      searchterm -site:pinterest.* will get rid of all pinterest results in DDG image search.

  • I don't think I've run across this site for a couple years now and I don't remember the name, but there was a site that would scrape PDFs from across the web and then put them behind a paywall/login, especially manuals, so if you were searching for the manual for something it would shit up your results in a similar way to what Pinterest does for images. Either they went out of business or search engines blacklisted them. It would be nice if one of those things happened to Pinterest (and Instagram which is quite similar).

  • I thought it was just me.
  • Was looking forward to installing this in Firefox until I read the user reviews. Seems it doesn't work or breaks other search features. Too bad. I hate having Pinterest crap show up in my search results.

  • My google image search works just fine. If you don't wanna get pinterest images you can try: "-site:pinterest.*"

    • Re:OMG, the web requires a 2sec workaround, RUINED (Score:4, Interesting)

      by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Monday November 08, 2021 @02:45PM (#61969197) Journal

      My google image search works just fine. If you don't wanna get pinterest images you can try: "-site:pinterest.*"

      Two seconds per search. More than that, actually, since the flow is: Search, see the results are full of pinterest crap, edit the query and search again.

      IMO Google Web Search should allow logged-in users to specify a list of sites they never want results from. I have a handful of them. And Google should consider de-ranking sites that a lot of users block in this fashion (with some abuse protection: You don't want a small but dedicated group to be able to coordinate an attack to take a given site out of search).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by qeveren ( 318805 )
        That used to be a feature on Google search, but it was removed years ago for some reason...

        • That used to be a feature on Google search, but it was removed years ago for some reason...

          Cite? I've been using Google since it was launched, switched over from Altavista, and I never saw that feature.

  • It's like 15+ years since Google Image Search and DDG image search is no better in 2021.

    I would have bet then that by now that we could save a cookie with "-site:pinterest.com" as a default search preference.

    And this week DDG seems to have stopped supporting "this whole phrase is required" syntax so if there are no results it just makes shit up.

    I've been having to go to StartPage for error message results now. Why is this all getting worse?

    • Why is this all getting worse?

      If you actually find what you want quickly, you can't waste time with more searches while they show you more advertisements.

      -Money makes the world go 'round and the internet go backwards.

  • Less pinterest. Easier to get to images. Feels like Google about 6 years ago.

  • What sort of financial arrangement exists between Google and Pinterest, that Pinterest hasn't been downranked into oblivion by now.
  • You know what really creates friction in the image grabbing process? The fact that Google removed the "View Image" button from its image search results several years ago.

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