Understanding Pinterest Analytics: What the Data Is Actually Telling You
Have you ever opened your Pinterest analytics and wondered what it all means? You’re not alone. Pinterest analytics is filled with so much information that it can be hard to determine what’s important and what isn’t.
There are numerous metrics and graphs, and they change daily, which makes it hard to understand what it all means for a Pinterest strategy.
I’ve spent the last decade growing, investigating, and auditing Pinterest accounts.
Analytics is where the account’s story lives. The metrics tracked are clues about whether the content is reaching the right people when they need it.
Here’s what I look at and what it tells me about the account’s health and strategy.
Your Pinterest Analytics Dashboard
You can find your Pinterest analytics inside your business account under the Analytics menu.
You can filter by date range, content type, and device.
I like to track metrics monthly because that’s enough time to see what’s been happening. Anything shorter isn’t enough time and is generally useless for understanding whether your strategy is working.
This is largely because Pinterest is a slow-moving platform that keeps both old and new content circulating.
Patterns only emerge when you give the data enough room to breathe.
Keep in mind the 24- to 48-hour reporting delay. Wait a couple of days into the new month before pulling the previous month’s data.
The Pinterest Analytics Metrics To Track
I normally only track impressions, saves, outbound clicks, and engagements. Doing so gives you enough data to understand what’s going on with your strategy.
IMPRESSIONS
Impressions tell you how many times your content appeared in front of someone — in search results, home feeds, and related content.
Think of impressions as reach. They tell you whether Pinterest is surfacing your content to searchers.
Growing impressions over time means the keyword and board strategy are working.
Dropping impressions can mean more seasonal content is picking up (for example, Christmas) or that perhaps you haven’t been pinning as consistently. It can also mean that you’ve lost pin rankings, which means you need to create new pins to try and rank again, or increase the number of keywords you’re targeting to gain back some reach.
Something to remember: impressions drop in summer across all accounts, no matter the niche. This happens because Pinterest users are on their phones less, not because your strategy isn’t working. Summer is no time to panic about your Pinterest metrics.
SAVES
A save means a pinner found your content valuable enough to want to come back to it.
These are Pinterest gold because when someone saves a pin, the platform interprets that as proof the content is worth circulating to more people.
I’ve seen saves extend the life of a pin – it keeps getting shown because Pinterest trusts it and knows it’s highly relevant to the search term it has assigned it.
Regularly look at which content gets saved most consistently. That pattern tells you exactly what your audience finds useful. It’s ideal to create even more content around the topics!
OUTBOUND CLICKS
Outbound clicks matter most for most businesses.
Outbound clicks tell you how many people left Pinterest and visited your website.
That’s when traffic becomes leads, subscribers, customers, and clients.
If impressions are growing, but your outbound click rate isn’t, you need to circle back to your pin design. Most of the time I see this disconnect, it’s because the text overlay isn’t doing a good enough job of enticing the searcher to click.
It could be because the overlays aren’t targeting the searcher, are vague and don’t communicate what’s on the other side, or don’t answer the search intent at all.
ENGAGEMENTS
Engagements are the metrics that track all activity on your pins. They include saves, outbound clicks, pin clicks (someone tapped on the pin for a closer look), video views – basically, anything and everything that showed a user engaged with your pin.
I love tracking this metric because it shows me the overall health of the account, but it shouldn’t be read as a standalone metric. It’s more like a quick snapshot into whether the account is growing and the strategy is working.
Pin Performance Over Time
Scrolling down to “Performance over time,” you can select which metric to see in graph form.
Here’s what it looks like:
You can sort the metrics by:
➝ Impressions
➝ Engagements
➝ Pin Clicks
➝ Outbound Clicks
➝ Saves
➝ Engagement Rate
➝ Pin Click Rate
➝ Outbound Click Rate
➝ Save Rate
➝ Total Audience
➝ Engaged Audience
A visual graph is helpful because it shows how your account’s performance fluctuates. The graph can be the first visual clue to whether an account’s metrics are dropping or growing. It’s also a great way to pinpoint when things dropped or increased.
Top Pins
As you keep scrolling, you’ll see the section for “Top Pins.”
You can sort these metrics by:
➝ Impressions
➝ Engagements
➝ Pin Clicks
➝ Outbound Clicks
➝ Saves
The pins in the top pins section are the ones performing best on your account.
Reviewing and tracking top pins is a great way to stay informed about what content resonates with your target audience.
If it resonates, it’s time to create similar content to attract more people to your ecosystem.
You can also select to see pins that were created (in other words, pinned by you) in the last 30 days—this can be insightful if you notice an increase or decrease in performance.
Top Pinterest Boards
If you keep scrolling down, you’ll arrive at the “Top boards” section.
Here’s what it looks like:
Since boards are an essential ranking signal, reviewing which boards perform best can provide more insight into what resonates with your target audience.
Top-performing boards are a great way to see if your seasonal or trending content performs well.
If that’s the case, then your top boards should feature seasonal or trending content.
Once the trend or season ends, your top boards should shift to more evergreen topics, depending on your niche.
Using Filters For Data Collection
Pinterest defaults to displaying impressions, engagements, outbound clicks, saves, total audience, and engaged audience over the last 30 days compared to the previous 30 days.
This is great for monitoring the account’s overall performance, but using the filters in the analytics dashboard is imperative for drilling down to see how your content is truly performing.
At the top, under “Overview,” you can select date ranges and content types.
Content types are organic or paid. If you’re not running ads, you’ll only have metrics for organic performance.
If you click “more filters,” you can see filters for audience demographics and content types.
Audience demographic filters include:
➝ Device used
➝ Age
➝ Gender
Content type filters include:
➝ All pins
➝ Pins leading to a claimed website
➝ Etsy
➝ Instagram
➝ Other Pins
That wraps up our walk-through of what is available via Pinterest analytics.
Now, let’s examine how to use the metrics and data you collect to inform your Pinterest marketing strategy plan.
How to Use Pinterest Analytics
Now that you know what everything means in your Pinterest analytics dashboard, what exactly should you track, and how do you use the data to inform your strategy?
Let’s remove the overwhelm and learn how to read, analyze, and use Pinterest analytics data.
The Most Important Pinterest Analytics Metrics to Track
There are four things I always track – for myself and clients:
➝ Impressions
➝ Saves
➝ Outbound Clicks
➝ Engagements
Tracking and understanding these metrics allows me to gauge the overall health of an account.
Impressions—If impressions are increasing, it means that Pinterest is showing the content to pinners. I don’t panic if impressions decrease unless they fall off a cliff.
There will always be natural ebbs and flows, and impressions will depend on season, trends, and time of year.
If you notice an alarming decrease in impressions, reach out to Pinterest for help to see if you’ve been caught in the spam filter.
Saves – (also called repins) are when a pinner saves your pin to their board.
Saves are a vital engagement metric because they signal to the algorithm that the content is good enough to return to and resonates with your target audience.
If saves are growing monthly and year over year, this is an excellent sign of the account’s health.
Outbound Clicks – when someone leaves Pinterest and visits the claimed domain, aka your website! Outbound clicks should be growing, but it will depend on your niche and time of year.
For example, if you don’t have a lot of seasonal 4th quarter content, you’ll notice your account metrics go down across the board. Also, your metrics will decrease if a trend comes along and you don’t have content for it.
Engagements – a collective of all engagements on your pins, including saves, clicks, pin clicks, comments, and more.
I like monitoring engagements because the number of engagements should also increase if the Pinterest strategy is successful.
How to Adjust Your Pinterest Marketing Strategy Using Analytics
Here are some tips for adjusting your Pinterest marketing strategy using data from analytics.
IMPRESSIONS
A drop in impressions indicates a trend taking off or a shift in the content’s seasonality.
For example, during the Q4 holiday season, the focus will be on holiday content, and if you don’t have content to support that shift, your impressions will decline. This is nothing to panic about. Keep pinning as you have been so that you’ll be ready when impressions go up on other content.
If impressions take a complete nosedive, contact Pinterest Help to ensure your account hasn’t been caught by the spam filter.
Impressions can also decrease if your pinning habits change. Have you been pinning less? Have you adequately optimized your Pinterest boards?
SAVES
If your saves are growing, there’s not much more to do other than create more pins for the content that is getting the most saves.
If your saves stop growing or become stagnant, review your pin designs.
Do you need to test other text overlays and calls to action?
Something about the pins isn’t resonating enough to get saves, so don’t be afraid to change the look of your pins to see if they speak to your audience more.
Test adding qualifiers to your text overlays.
Another thing to consider is user intent – does your pin answer the search?
OUTBOUND CLICKS
Again, it could be a seasonal thing or the pin designs.
As the account grows, outbound clicks should increase. If outbound clicks become stagnant, review your designs and target keywords. Are there any other keyword angles to target? Can you add more qualifiers to your pin designs to prompt a click? Did you answer the search with the correct user intent?
For example, instead of “10 healthy chicken dinners,” could you shift it to “10 healthy chicken dinners that can be made in 30 minutes or less”? That last text overlay appeals to more people than healthy chicken dinners.
ENGAGEMENTS
Since engagements are a collection of saves, pin clicks, outbound clicks, etc., the advice above applies to this section!
THAT’S A WRAP
Pinterest analytics are a great way to track the overall growth and health of your marketing efforts on Pinterest.
The most important metrics to track are impressions, saves, engagements, and outbound clicks.
Check your analytics monthly to ensure you’re meeting your Pinterest goals.
If metrics are decreasing, use the recommendations offered throughout this post.
Happy pinning! 📌
RELATED READS YOU MIGHT LIKE:
- How To Create The Best Pinterest Boards for Your Business Account
- How To Use Pinterest for Online Business Marketing
- How To Drive Traffic with Pinterest Marketing
- Pinterest Marketing for Beginners
