Pinterest links have been growing in Webmaster Tools

[tdawson09]

I've been using Pinterest for a couple of years now. It has been great in promoting our brand and generating referral traffic.

My question is this. I've noticed in Webmaster Tools, in the "Links to your site" section, that my links from Pinterest has really shot up.It's gone from 3,500 links, 6 months ago, to over 23,000 recently.

Those of you using Pinterest, have you seen a similar increase? Just wondering if Google is recognizing more of the links, even though they are "no-follow" links.

[LesleyPaone]

I actually think this is part of a deeper strategy. I have google alerts on several client keywords and I just got an alert a few minutes ago. It was for a twitter post. I can't think of a time when I have ever gotten one for a social network post, even though my clients are very active on social media. I am going out on a limb and saying that google is starting to give more rank and actually indexing in a sense social media posts that are not behind a wall.

[tdawson09]

Thank Takeshi. Yes, I was aware of the no-follow policy with Pinterest. Just saw it as odd that Google is picking up a greater percentage of Pinterest links than before. I'm not seeing that same characteristic across any other links.

[TakeshiYoung]

Google Webmaster Tools doesn't distinguish between dofollow and nofollow links, so just because they show up there doesn't mean it's doing anything for your SEO. If you're seeing an increase, it could mean the page authority of your Pinterest page has increased, leading it to get crawled more.

Pinterest switched to nofollow links in March of 2012, then switched back to dofollow links for pins and profiles in July 2013, before switching back to all nofollow links in November 2013.