The web often has a “flavor of the month” platform. Some stick around, others fall by the wayside. The latest biggie is visual sharing website Pinterest which has proven to be a geek gals BFF. While female dominated (there are some guy’s versions, my favorite being gentlemint.com), adoption of the system has been significant and, as Internet Marketers, it’s useful to ask if it has value for our clients.

Often one of the first things we look at is SEO benefit. We know that backlinks are a valuable commodity and initially Pinterest offered great value. Recently however, they adjusted their backlinks to be nofollow which means that the links do not give significant SEO benefit (I personally think there is still value to nofollow incoming links) so if we are thinking about using the system solely to build links, we’d be wasting our time.

Next thing we look at is Pinterest’s own Search visibility. While I’ve personally seen it appear in search results, it doesn’t seem to have the same impact that Linkedin or Facebook enjoys. For a new player, there is some strong evidence to support its own search visibility.

According to SEM Rush, its Search visibility is off the charts. That’s not so surprising with some 800K results in the Top 2 pages and significant growth from the end of last year.

Now, what sort of results are we seeing? Let’s imagine I’m a Minnie Mouse fan in need of some party suggestions. According to Google’s keyword tool, a lot of other people are as well. “Minnie Mouse Party Ideas” has some 8100 estimated searches per month. Have a look a the #1 spot!

So what do we do with this data?

Given that the demographics definitely skew towards women and it’s a very visual/artsy community, the site lends itself well to businesses that cover at least one of these elements. For some, Pinterest is already proving to be a solid referral source. SEO benefits should not be the primary reason for joining and being active on Pinterest.