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This probably goes without saying, but the incredibly popular and growing social sharing and media site, Pinterest does nofollow links to third party sites.
When social networking and sharing sites first launched, including Flickr, Wikipedia and others, they rarely used the nofollow attribute. But Pinterest didn't waste any time adding it.
The nofollow attribute was introduced in 2005 to fight comment spam and other types of link spam. But it has grown into its own beast.
It might help Pinterest from being abused with link spam, but won't stop spammers and their larger issue of copyright issues and DMCA takedowns.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
JamesCarson
03/19/2012 12:36 pm
The links in the pin description are still followed...
Barry Schwartz
03/19/2012 12:37 pm
Not for long. :)
Barry Schwartz
03/19/2012 12:46 pm
Are you sure, I tried adding a link with no go.
BrentNau
03/19/2012 12:54 pm
The description with the Pinterest Pin are still dofollows. Pinterest Pins also use the description for the page title, meta description and Tweet This button title. So even if they do nofollow all links you can certainly benefit from a straight link. If you are looking for a social image site that provides the best seo benefit you should check out Minglewing.
andreainfusino
03/19/2012 01:40 pm
hi mr Schwartz, you're right not at all, some nofollow have been inserted into pins, but if you paste a link into pin description it is still dofollow! Please, let me know if you agree with me (for example in my pin available here: http://pinterest.com/pin/12314598951108330/ )
JamesCarson
03/19/2012 02:08 pm
Just posted a pin here http://pinterest.com/pin/287597126174208749/ link still followable although no anchor text.
Avinash Conda
03/19/2012 03:32 pm
The links we post in the description are still being shown as hyperlinks and are still a follow links.
Belinda M. Mathew
03/20/2012 09:18 am
Pinterest It's still do follow just see this http://goo.gl/3v48J
Jimmer
03/20/2012 01:44 pm
Pinterest = Bandwidth usage So far thats the only thing ive gotten from Pintrest ...
terrawire
03/23/2012 08:42 pm
Fail blog.... ;) Hehehe. Just another site I have to get into. Ahh geez...sometimes I wish social viralness of the sites I work on would just take over so I wouldnt have to do it. Guess that shows my work still needs to be retuned. Anyhow its good to keep an eye on these things and thanks for giving a heads up. A think the comments in this blog gave a great bunch of insight...which is rare. So read the comments!
terrawire
03/23/2012 08:42 pm
That is in reference to the no follow in pinterest. Good to know your readers are well read up and checked in on your post.
alexpeerenboom
03/26/2012 06:34 pm
There are still two other spots where links are followed: 1. The main website link within the bio section of a profile. 2. When you are viewing a Board, with all of the pins listed within it, each pin has a link going back to the source page of the image with the root domain as the anchor text.
Hayley (Silkstream)
03/28/2012 09:43 am
I was adding "source" links into the description to get followed backlinks...Today when i checked these it appears they have now added 'rel no_follow' to links here now too. The existing links still appear as followed but any new pins are not. You can view this on one of my boards here: http://pinterest.com/silkstream/the-queens-diamond-jubilee/ centered around the queens jubilee. Check out the source link on the corgi cushion pin!
Grepable
06/27/2012 07:34 pm
Not sure if you already know but the html of your post title is broken.
Dan
09/13/2013 01:43 pm
Hi wonder if you could tell me this? On our blog we use flickr creative commons images and link back to the source on flickr. Should we use nofollow on these images? Thanks Dan