How to enable Pinterest Rich Pins in 2019
Would you love some help on how to enable Pinterest rich pins in 2019?
Are you frustrated because you are unable to attach rich pins to your Pinterest and have your business stand out from other competitors on the social platform?
If your answer to the above questions is “Yes”, then know that you’re not alone.
Pinterest users just like yourself are asking similar questions. See them below;
Hi Tanyi, I’m really struggling with trying to enable Rich Pins. I even purchased Yoast Premium as I thought this would make it easier (from tutorials I watched) but it’s still not validating for me. Can you help??
I am struggling with rich pins for Pinterest. I have followed all the steps in a blog post I found on google and I still can’t get Pinterest to validate the rich pins. please help.
I’ve been posting my pins from my blog posts to Pinterest, but when I go to search for them on Pinterest, none of my pins show up. I read something about rich pins but when I tried to set those up, it said I need metadata. I tried to read up on that but it was like reading French. Do you know how I can set up my Pins so they are visible? I am literally only getting like 5-6 views on each of my blog posts and that’s not really very sufficient when I’ve heard Pinterest is a good traffic driver.
Looking for information on rich pins. Do you have to validate and apply for every post for rich pins?
Does anyone know how long it is taking Pinterest to approve your rich pins application? I applied yesterday, have gone thru the validation process successfully, but have not received anything from them in my email yet. Thank you!
Hello Tanyi, I am trying to enable rich pins. I put my URL into the Rich Pin Validator and get an error message saying, “We were unable to retrieve any data from your URL.” Does anyone know the troubleshooting steps for this?
These questions can go on and on. I know you have more to add to the list but before I answer all your burning questions, here are some stunning Pinterest statistics to pay attention to:
– 81% of Pinterest users are females.
–40% of New Signups are Men; 60% New Signups are Women.
– Pinterest has over 5 million users exploring over 75 billion ideas and saving 2 billion shopping pins on boards daily.
– Half of the Pinners have an average or greater income of $50k USD per year and the top 10% of Pinners make greater than $125k USD annually.
– The best part of all the disposable income swimming around on Pinterest is that 87% of Pinners have purchased a product through the promotional influence of Pinterest,
-72% of Pinners use Pinterest to decide what to buy offline, and 93% of active pinners said they use Pinterest to plan for purchases.
–The platform hosts nearly 175 billion pins today.
–60% pinners refer to Pinterest for purchase ideas
-72% pinners say Pinterest inspires them to shop when they are actually not looking for anything.
–55% pinners say they use Pinterest to shop for and find products
Source: Pinterest by the Numbers (2018): Stats, Demographics & Fun Facts, 26 Jan. 2018
If there’s one thing you should take away from these stunning stats, is the fact that Pinterest is a platform where users go to have ideas to shop. In other words, users on Pinterest have money to spend on your products or services.
This is why setting up rich pins is very important to attract your target audience, convince and convert them.
What is Pinterest
Pinterest is an online “scrapbook” founded in March 2010 by Evan Sharp, Paul Sciarra and Ben Silbermann, with a current valuation of 12.3 billion dollars and 175 million monthly users and a wide selection of contents from Architectures and Arts to Sciences and Sports, which is able to target the many interests and passions for a user.
Related: A list of 100 Pinterest-communities you can join
What are Rich Pins
Rich Pins add extra information on the Pin itself, giving Pinners a richer experience and increasing engagement. Information in a Rich Pin is independent of the Pin description, ensuring that important information is always tied to the Pin.
After the recent Pinterest update, it is very difficult to identify a rich pin just by scrolling on the feed. You can only identify a rich pin after clicking on it.
The images below show the difference between a rich pin and a non-rich pin.
note: The metadata was automatically pulled from my website. I did not add those.
How To Enable Pinterest Rich Pins on WordPress
If you’re a WordPress user, then luck is on your side, setting up rich pins is one of the easiest things to do. With the help of the Yoast plugin, you’ll be all set in three easy steps.
Before you can begin setting up rich pins, you need to make sure that;
- Your Pinterest account is a business account
- Your website has been claimed on Pinterest
Steps to enable Pinterest Rich Pins on WordPress.
- Install The “Yoast“ SEO Plugin
- Visit The “Rich Pin Validator“ and Validate
- Then click apply.
Install The “Yoast“ SEO Plugin
Install the Yoast SEO plugin and enable Open graph metadata.
Assuming you already know how to install a plugin, I’ll just go ahead and show you how to enable the open graph metadata.
Visit The “Rich Pin Validator“
Go to Pinterest’s Rich Pin Validator, and plug in a link to any blog post on your site (it CANNOT be the link to your homepage). It doesn’t matter which blog post and you only need to do one. Click “validate.”
STEP THREE: APPLY!
After validating, you would see a message that says “your pins have been validated!” Then, click “apply now.” A pop up will come up with your web site’s domain and “HTML tags” selected. Click “apply now” once again. Congrats, you’re done!
Now, you will just need to wait for a few days while Pinterest approves your application. Once it’s approved, your pins will all display as rich pins.
How to enable Pinterest rich pins on Squarespace.
If you are on Squarespace and will like to enable rich pins as well. This guide from Squarespace might come in handy.
How to enable Pinterest rich pins on blogger
The process of enabling rich pins on blogger is very easy. The following steps will help get you up and running in no time.
- Prepare your website
- Install the code
- Validate
- Apply
Prepare your website
To get your website ready for rich pins, you have to make sure that you have enabled “search description”.
- Log in to your dashboard
- Go to “settings” >>> “search preference” >>> “meta tags” >>> “edit”
- Select Yes to enable search description and then enter in a short description for your website (150 characters or less). Click the Save Changes button to save your description.
Next, if you add a new post (or edit an older post), you will see a box in the Post Settings sidebar that allows you to enter a Search Description for the post. This box only appears after you have enabled meta tags
Adding a post description is optional, but I do recommend it. Also – you don’t have to do this step before you get rich pins set up. Your rich pins description will be drawn from the first paragraph of your article.
Install the code
- Go to your dashboard and click “theme” >>> “Edit HTML”
Put your mouse cursor in the theme’s code box and search for <head>:
(To open the search box, press the Ctrl+F buttons on a PC or the Cmd+F buttons on a Mac.)
You can copy and paste the code below your page’s <head> tag
. Just replace the text in bold”YOUR NAME HERE” to match yours.
<meta content='article' property='og:type'/> <meta expr:content='data:post.title' property='og:title'/> <meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' property='og:description'/> <meta expr:content='data:blog.url' property='og:url'/> <meta expr:content='data:blog.title' property='og:site_name'/> <meta expr:content='data:post.timestampISO8601' property='article:published_time'/> <meta content='YOUR NAME HERE' property='article:author'/>
Click the “Save Theme” button. And you’re ready for the next step.
Validate
To check whether your rich pins are working you need to visit the rich pins validator
And input a URL to any of your blog posts and click Validate
Next click ‘apply now’
At first, it took about 2 weeks for Pinterest to approve rich pins but now it takes only a few minutes. If after about two hours you have not been approved, you need to contact Pinterest support.
Types of Rich Pins
Rich Pins add extra details to Pins and update important information from the websites they came from. If something changes on the original website, the Rich Pin updates to reflect that change.
There are currently different types of rich pins on Pinterest: Recipe, Article, Product, and App.
Recipe – adds info to your pin like ingredient lists, cooking time, serving and if the recipe is vegetarian, paleo, gluten-free etc.
Article – shows the headline, title, description, and author of your article and blog post.
Product – lets you show the price, stock level/status and a description of the product on pins from your website.
App – takes iOS users to the app store to download your app
Place Pins – They include Address, phone numbers and are used by businesses such as Restaurants, Bakery to help pinners get to their business site.
Movie Pins – they include Ratings, Reviews, and enable pinners to learn about new movies.
Conclusion.
Note that you don’t have to validate and apply for every post for rich pins. Once you have been approved for one post, the rest of your posts will appear as rich pins.
Also, if you click”validate” and get an error, then you might not have set up your metadata correctly. Simply leave me a message below. I should be able to help you out.


Hi Tanyi,
What an excellent article! I had no idea that my Yoast plugin can do this. Now that I know what to do, I’ll give it a whirl.
You have explained this so well, that I’m saving this as a guideline to when I want to enable a “Pinterest Rich” post.
Thanks again,
-Donna
But how to add the HTML metadata (Rich Pin documentation). I need a product pin. I don’t know where to add the metadata in my wordpress website.
Hi Megha,
If you’ve customized the code from the rich pin documentation, to add the code to your WordPress site, download the “Insert Headers and Footers” plugin by WPbegginer and paste the code in the head section and click save.
Hope this helped.
Hi Donna,
So glad the article was helpful. Thank you so much for reading.
I can’t seem to access the validate link – any ideas?
Hello,
When I enter a blog post URL (from blogger) on the Pinterest validator, I get this message, “We were unable to retrieve any data from your URL.”
When I enter the blog URL, I get this message, “Congratulations! Your rich pins are approved and on Pinterest.” but is doesn’t say they are validated or give me the option to apply. The approved pins they are referencing are past pins I pinned from blogger, but they are not rich pins. Does the code just go on the next line under or is there more to it than that? I know nothing about code. Help!
Thank you!
Hi Tanyi
I had already followed the step for my blog but somehow still I am not getting rich pin enabled though after validating I got message.
“Congratulations! Your rich pins are approved and on Pinterest” but no Apply button.
I am really pissed as I am struggling since last 3 days to get this done but still no luck. Please help.
I too facing the exact same issue though I know the coding but still not able to resolve the issue. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Hi there! I use Squarespace and have done all the requirements via Squarespace and via Pinterest. I am valdated and it says I was approved and my rich pins should show up within an hour. It has been 24 hours and my pins are not yet rich. I have been back and forth with Squarespace over the last week to make sure I had everything set right on their end. I have done everything they have told me to do. Still not working. How long do rich pins take to approve? Is it a requirement to have a business Pinterest account for rich pins to work. What am I doing wrong. I am so frustrated. Thanks for any and all help.
Thanks for your explaination! What about Shopify? I have read that Yoast isn’t compatible with Shopify? Is there alternative to Yoast for my Shopify shop?
I got the message “Congratulations! Your rich pins are approved and on Pinterest.” but it does not appear the “Apply Now” Box and the option HTML. It only shows a “Fetch new scrape information box”. What am I doing wrong?
Hello – I have a blogger blog and followed your instructions to enable Pinterest Rich Pins. After I ‘saved theme’ and ‘validated’ I went back to my blog and realized that all of my sidebar gadgets have disappeared. I am at a loss how to retrieve them and sadly I did not back up the blog. Please reply as to how I can fix this. Thank-you, Suzanne