Sunday, June 2, 2013

Sorry, BuzzFeed: Pinterest Isn’t A Better Search Engine Than Google

I went on a BuzzFeed diet about a month ago, where I stopped following the site and reading the content there. I should have stuck to it, because I wouldn’t be wasting my time now dissecting one of its stupid, pageview-baiting stories. In this one, Pinterest is positioned as a better search engine than Google.
The story runs through 10 examples illustrating how Pinterest “beats” Google “nine out of ten times.” But despite the headline, these aren’t examples of Pinterest being a better search engine than Google. They’re examples of Pinterest supposedly being a better image search engine than Google, which is a huge difference.

Pinterest As Best Search Engine?


For example, say I’m trying to find a site like BuzzFeed itself. I’d probably go to a search engine and enter “BuzzFeed.” On Pinterest, I get this:

Which link takes me to BuzzFeed? None of them, because they aren’t links to sites, they’re links to pictures. The biggest picture with the BuzzFeed logo isn’t even from the BuzzFeed Pinterest account. The one of the right of that is, through a repin. With some clicking, I’d eventually get to the BuzzFeed site.

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