Pinterest Updates Guided Search to Target Male Audience

If you’ve ever spent time on Pinterest, you know that the content tends to cater around the ladies. While there’s nothing wrong with that, it looks Pinterest’s newest update to its search algorithm will make the site more gender neutral.

According to the Wall Street Journal, up until 2014, 71% of users on Pinterest have been women. Lately, the “visually discovery site” has received a 73% increase in male users. Due to the rapid growth, Pinterest is adapting to the change.

Credit: Pinterest

Pei Yin, engineer at Pinterest took to their official blog post to layout what this change will look like. He admittedly said that searching for “watches” on Pinterest before would bring up a majority of ladies’ timepieces. Now, however, if a male user searches for watches, he may see pins “inspired by what other guys have pinned”. Yin also encouraged users to search for queries such as hair, shoes, and health to take a look at the difference in results.

Of course, there are occasional times where users really do want to see content of the opposite sex (for gift ideas, for example). Pinterest recommends that users temporarily adjust account settings to find appropriate results.

Why the change? Much like many of the other social sites, Pinterest is looking to keep their sudden increase in male audience and keep on building numbers to eventually sell more ads through their “promoted pins”.

Know Your Target Audience!

It’s important for marketers to know your audience well! By focusing your efforts on a specific buyer persona. You will have the ability to really take advantage of this new update and have it work in your favor in terms of digital marketing campaigns and onsite content.