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Comment by Nextgrid | Hacker News Reader

Pinterest is a successful product that provides value to its users (I'm not the target market and I guess most of us aren't either, but there is a segment of people that do get value out of it). I don't believe they have any malicious intent to explicitly go out of their way to ruin image search. I'm sure they don't mind the free SEO but I don't believe there is an explicit effort to mislead search engine crawlers (especially considering other engines correctly ignore such pages).

The problem is that their pages unintentionally trigger a flaw in Google's crawler (it's unable to detect that the content is actually obscured by a JS-based login wall) and Google is unwilling to implement an override because this spam contributes to their bottom-line (increases "engagement" on the search results page).

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> I don't believe they have any malicious intent to explicitly go out of their way to ruin image search…

And

> The problem is that their pages exploit a flaw in Google's crawler…

Don’t seem to be statements that really make any consistent sense.

It’s like if you ordered soup and instead got a bowl of human shit, a thousand times, and then felt compelled to explain that nobody wants you to eat shit, it’s just that bowls are a really convenient place to shit in.

Pages are primarily written for display & human consumption. Whatever was left of the "semantic HTML" went out the window when everyone switched to the JS SPA fad.

As far as I know there is no "right" way to design a JS SPA overlay/loginwall in a way that search engines ignore it - it's not like Pinterest is intentionally ignoring a spec or designing a page that misleads search engine crawlers (other engines seem to handle Pinterest just fine). Outright denying access to search engines could be wrong because logged-in Pinterest users may actually want those results, so that's not a good solution either.

The fault is ultimately on Google for ignoring this high-profile issue for such a long time because it contributes to their bottom-line, even though a very simple, low-tech fix (easier than making the crawler recognize such loginwalls reliably) could be to just allow users to make their own decision as to whether to block the domain, like Kagi has done.

> it's not like Pinterest is intentionally ignoring a spec or designing a page that misleads search engine crawlers

And

> The problem is that their pages exploit a flaw in Google's crawler…

I apparently misunderstood your phrasing of “exploit” to mean something intentional. You submit that Pinterest is unintentionally exploiting a flaw in a way that both drives traffic to them and ruins search.

I suppose in my shit soup analogy, the thing you’d explain is that there’s shit in the bowl because the laws of physics coincidentally allow shit to rest in a bowl.

Apologies - I've edited my original comment to make it clearer that I meant "exploit" in a non-intentional way.

Is there a possibly extant universe wherein Pinterest is acting both intentionally and destructively to the detriment of everyone else?

I’d like to add that Hanlon’s razor is a fun bit of internet lore wherein we pretend humans do not act intentionally that’s based on, uhhh…

The thing about Pinterest is that it seems to be offering something that it never delivers. A few years ago I was doing an image search and I was like, fine, I’ll sign up, I just want to see this image I’m looking for so I went through the whole process and they still wouldn’t show me the image I wanted to see. Have you ever had one of those dreams where you’re trying to run forward but you’re not getting anywhere? That’s Pinterest, at least in my experience.

Reminds me of the Warez sites around 1995 - 2000. Searching for "Photoshop 5 crack" or similar would lead you to a web site that would ask you to click on another link which would open a dozen popup windows. Many of those popups would also purport to have what you were looking for - just click on this link here (which opens a load of further popups). Teenage me spent too much time wading through these pages. To this day, I'm not sure whether any of these sites really had warez or whether they were just a huge clickbait mazes.

> The problem is that their pages exploit a flaw in Google's crawler

Not sure it's still a flaw when it's so trivial to derank, Google could manage it on the barest of whims.

Exploit is likely the wrong word as it isn't Pinterest doing something shady. It is more of a Google flaw and I'm sure Google sees it for what it is and hence they don't de-rank a site for doing nothing wrong.

But yes, they could fix it. However if it keeps you searching maybe they don't want to.

> Exploit is likely the wrong word as it isn't Pinterest doing something shady. It is more of a Google flaw and I'm sure Google sees it for what it is and hence they don't de-rank a site for doing nothing wrong.

I don't think argument takes exploit off the table. It just doesn't address it. Same thing for Pinterest's shady behavior.

I don't see any shady or exploit-y SEO at Pinterest. Unless I'm missing something the problem is strictly a Google problem.

> I don't see any shady or exploit-y SEO at Pinterest.

Let's clarify this. Do you believe

1) Pinterest did not intentionally modify it's actions in any way to dominate Google's image search or

2) Pinterest's purposeful actions to spam Google images wasn't shady or exploit-y

> Pinterest is a successful product that provides value to its users

Like me! I use it to get outfit & interior design inspiration. Haven't found nothing quite like it

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