Over the past month, I have noticed a steady decline in my Pinterest impressions. This began to happen soon after the Pinterest Mass Suspension of accounts (which apparently was an error).

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In terms of my Pinterest strategy, I was not doing anything differently to see such a huge daily decline.

I was still creating pins.

Pinning at least 2 to 3 pins manually.

Creating at least 10 more pins for each blog post.

I was pinning these spaced out over the coming months using the Tailwind scheduler.

I always had fresh content pinning to my account.

I had refined my pin creation and I thought the pins were starting to look okay.

You can judge for yourself.

This was after I began to take some training to learn more about Pinterest Strategies.

Why are my Pinterest Impressions going down so quickly?

If you have noticed that your impressions have just steadily declined over the past month or two, then you would not be alone.

This decline in page views or impressions has been happening to many bloggers’ Pinterest accounts.

You may be wondering what you have been doing wrong?

Have you been pinning too much or pinning on the wrong boards?

The answer is it’ s not you.

That will be a relief for you to hear.

What has happened is that Pinterest has changed so much over the past months.

The changes that have taken place at Pinterest HQ will explain why there has been this huge decline in Pinterest traffic, especially for bloggers.

I have noticed this steady decline myself after firstly seeing a huge surge in my Pinterest traffic.

I had been pleased with my traffic results and efforts when my Pinterest page views increased.

Then many of us saw a huge drop again in traffic from Pinterest, soon after Pinterest became a public entity with stockholders to keep happy.

There was no doubt that huge changes were taking place behind the scenes at Pinterest.

There has been muttering amongst bloggers, who were beginning to wonder whether Pinterest was worth their time and effort any longer.

As clearly Pinterest seemed to no longer be rewarding their efforts to create content on the Pinterest platform.

Then Pinterest shut down mass accounts for no apparent reason, with many losing huge amounts of traffic overnight.

Some even lost many followers as well.

I was affected by the Pinterest Mass Suspension.

You can read more about that and how I got my Pinterest account restored again.

After that, I thought that normal service had been resumed once again.

But after this, I began to see daily that my Pinterest views/impressions were starting to decline.

Here are my daily views on the 3^rd July 2021. I don’ t have a huge account as Pinterest was a traffic source I had only recently started to implement and spend my time building.

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As you can see, I had 1.2K daily impressions on that day.

Fast forward to August 2021 and my daily impression is just 99 impressions for that day.

As you will agree that is a huge hit.

I have looked at my analytics over the past months.

My monthly impressions 90 days ago were at a healthy 14.8k.

The graph below shows that engagement was up and that my total audience was up by 145% (wow).

I was getting traffic and growing and 3 months ago I was happy with where my Pinterest traffic strategy was going.

But let’s see what it looks like now.

My traffic has taken a nose dive that’ s for sure.

It’ s August 2021, and I am down to 1.7k monthly views.

Each day I look at my account, the traffic dropping before my very eyes.

I have still been blogging regularly, creating fresh posts.

Usually, I create at least 10 pins for each new blog post.

I use the Pinterest scheduler to pin as many pins as I can using spaced-out intervals.

I pin one pin directly from my blog.

The rest of the pins are scheduled on Tailwind.

This all takes time.

Time to find interesting images.

Time to come up with catchy pin titles.

Time to write relevant pin descriptions.

Then you have to design the pins (don’ t get me started on how much time that can take!!).

It all adds up when you are trying to create content.

Is Pinterest Dead? Have I Been Blocked? Have I been Shadowbanned?

A first I wondered if I had done something wrong that had got my account flagged.

Was my Pinterest account broken?

Had I been blocked?

Maybe I had even got myself shadow banned?

What is shadow banning in Pinterest?

Shadow banning is where your content is partially blocked by Pinterest.

This means that it is not readily available when your keywords are searched.

Your content won’ t be shown to others, but you may not realise this, as it may show for you.

You may not know that you have been shadow banned until you see a decline in your traffic.

To find out if you have been shadow banned you would need to contact Pinterest support.

This may take some time and they are reported not to be very proactive at times in getting back to people.

You may need to persevere through that if you think you have been shadow banned.

If all looks okay with your Pinterest account, then what?

I hadn’ t done anything differently from before, so I have ruled those options out.

So, if my Pinterest account is up and seems to be working just fine, then why aren’ t I get any more traffic than I am?

I knew that I was not alone in this drop in traffic with Pinterest.

Because many were talking about this in Facebook groups, bloggers were re-thinking new strategies about how to get traffic without Pinterest. They too were seeing a steep decline.

They were starting to look outside of Pinterest for traffic, and wondering if Pinterest was worth their time anymore?

Bloggers were commenting on the swift and sudden decline in Pinterest views to their blog.

If your Pinterest impressions have dropped in 2021 or you have seen a decline maybe even reaching zero

Then just know that this is probably not down to you.

Here’ s my take on what has happened with Pinterest.

They have stockholders who they need to keep happy.

Now Pinterest wants and needs to keep people on their platform for longer.

The longer users stay on their platform, the more ads they can show them.

The more users they have, the more apt a company is to buy more ads.

The more ads they can sell, the more money they make.

The more money they make, they keep their stockholders happy.

Pinterest priorities have changed which is quite clear.

Content creators are no longer their priority.

It’ s their shareholders and money that can be made that is the priority.

But if content creators don’ t feel valued, then maybe they will stop creating content?

Only time will tell whether this will affect Pinterest and whether it will continue to please its users.

What is clear is that Pinterest users are going to see a huge change in the platform.

Pinterest now by default is trying to keep users on its platform rather than sending them elsewhere, like to your blog or your storefront at Etsy or Shopify.

Hence the decline in traffic for bloggers.

Pinterest also seems to have lost focus on its users.

It seems to have lost why it started in the first place.

Pinterest was this wonderful visual platform where you could go to get could get inspiration.

Now it seems that Pinterest wants users to stay for as long as possible on its platform for their gain.

To do this they have developed Idea Pins (Video Pins.)

When I log into my Pinterest account, I have had messages encouraging me to get started with Idea pins for a while now.

I have kept away from Idea Pins, I will tell you why further on.

What are Idea Pins?

According to Pinterest Idea Pins are the evolution of story pins but better.

They have written a detailed post in May 2021 about Idea Pins and why they are promoting these.

You can read that article on Idea Pins in full for yourself, but I want to highlight a few key sentences and keywords, from that post. This will help you to understand why your blog traffic with Pinterest may have dropped so suddenly.

Pinterest spells out their formula about Idea Pins like this:-  

“This new access and capability will empower anyone with a business account to create inspiring content and better interact with their audiences, building more engaged communities directly on Pinterest. ”

The post goes on to say,

“Idea Pins make it easy for creators to publish high quality, long lasting, save-able content directly to Pinterest. ”

The keywords that stood out for me were “directly on Pinterest ”.

What I understand from that article is that Pinterest wants to keep traffic on Pinterest.

Pinterest wants users to stay on their platform and engage with the content there.

It does not want to send users to your blog.

That is the last thing on Pinterest’ s mind right now.

Here’ s how Idea Pins will help Pinterest to do that.

Idea Pins use new publishing tools including, video recording, voice-over recording, editing tools to help content creators create more video type content pins aka Idea Pins.

You create a Pin with a video showing a how to something interesting encouraging the person to watch to the end, all the time encouraging them to stay on Pinterest.

Pinterest says that Idea Pins will help pinners,

“build their presence on Pinterest, focusing on published content (like Idea Pins) first and foremost ”

It’ s simple really, Idea Pins keep users on the Pinterest platform. That’ s why they were created.

I wanted to find out more about their Creator Code around Idea Pins as indicated in their article:

Pinterest says their:-  “The Creator Code – our content policy designed to keep Pinterest a positive and inspiring place ”,

however, the link to the Creator Code on that post seems to be broken.

But this is what the Creator Code says.  

Should Bloggers Be Worried About this Decline in Pinterest Traffic?

Bloggers have definitely been worried about this decline that they have noticed in their Pinterest traffic.

Many have contacted Pinterest and have received by return a standard canned email response which states something along these lines:

“While standard and video Pin content is still discoverable in-home feed and search, Idea Pins are the best way to build an organic audience on Pinterest. Idea Pins give creators all the elements they need to tell their story, from in-app video recording to made-for doing publishing features like instructions and ingredient templates. Idea Pins show up in more places on Pinterest — featured prominently at the top of home feed, in the Today Tab, on creator profiles and more. Pinners who engage with Idea Pins will find everything they need to take action without having to leave the app — a top request we’ ve heard recently directly from Pinners ”.

Is Pinterest Still Worth It for Bloggers?

I am beginning to wonder if Pinterest is still worth my time and effort and maybe you are wondering that too?

If Pinterest was your main traffic source, then this is probably a huge worry for you.

Do you start to create Idea Pins or not?

If you spend your time creating Idea Pins, you may be wondering whether this will bring you any traffic?

From what we have covered in this post, it is likely you will probably get zero traffic for the amount of time you will spend creating an Idea Pin.

To be honest it took me a long time just creating normal pins.

I can’ t imagine how much time will be taken away from writing content in order to create video content.

Let’ s be real here, video content is not quick or easy to create.

Your video will need to be engaging and most of all you will need to like to be in front of a video (which frankly I do not).

It seems that Pinterest is trying to be a cross between, Instagram, Tik Tok and YouTube.  

It would be fair to say that the Pinterest now is not the Pinterest that we have been used to and came to love.

I for one have started to fall out of love with Pinterest.

I have decided not to spend time creating Idea Pins.

I have reduced my Pinning strategy for the moment.

I have decided that I will create a standard pin for each post and pin this directly on Pinterest.

This is to keep my content fresh and updated on the platform.

But it will no longer be a strategy that I spend too much time focusing on.  

I will be ceasing my Tailwind subscription when it ends in a couple of months, as I will have no further use for it.

Tailwind was one of the resources that I promoted but I will update my views on this in my resources folder.

Tailwind is holding many webinars, trying to encourage content creators to make idea pins.

It is in their interest for you to do so and stay with them.

It must be a worrying time for Tailwind, whose business is built on encouraging content creators to create and schedule content.

Many bloggers in the communities I am part of, have been commenting that they are ceasing or planning to cease their Tailwind subscriptions. Because it simply is no longer needed as they will be reducing the number of pins they will be creating.

How Else Can You Get Traffic To Your Blog Besides Pinterest?

It will be disappointing if you have spent a lot of time building your Pinterest presence.

You will have a lot to lose if your main traffic source was from Pinterest.

I have kept a balance when developing traffic sources.

Pinterest was an additional traffic source that I started working on in December 2020.

I have spent a lot of time getting to understand that platform.

I even took Pinterest Strategies training, which I can highly recommend.

I am sure that Carly, the creator of that training will be watching Pinterest very closely.

She recently updated her training for 2021, so you may want to learn more about your Pinterest strategy if you want to create standard pins.

From now I will be focusing a lot more on SEO and refining SEO on my site and Site Page Speed.

Try this 30 day Free SEO training to get started with cleaning up your blog SEO.

You would do also well in keeping up to date with Google Page Experience updates and create content with this in mind.

What is clear is that bloggers will either learn new strategies about how to use Idea Pins to their advantage or if it is worth the effort at all.

I will certainly be following in the blogging communities, and if there are any updates about increasing traffic using Idea Pins, I will post those here.

Bloggers have always kept adapting as the Pinterest platform has evolved over the past few years.

Pinterest used to be much easier back in the day, and well done to you if you got started early on.

What I wonder is whether this Pinterest update will be one step too far for bloggers and Pinners.

I wonder whether this change at Pinterest will result in a steady decline in the amount of content that Pinterest will see on its platform.

Only time will tell, I for now am focusing my time and efforts on gaining training through SEO and producing content on my blog.

Let me know in the comments below, if you have seen a decline in your blog traffic from Pinterest and if you are planning on using Ideas Pins.

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*This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you. Please read full disclosure for more information*

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