Accessing Pinterest Analytics, and verifying your website with Pinterest

This Quick-tip is about how you can verify the website (or blog) associated with your Pinterest account - and solving a small problem with the meta-tag that Pinterest give you.

Pinterest have recently announced Pinterest Web Analytics, which will show you "how many people have pinned content from your site, what content is most popular with pinners, and more."   (From their announcement email.

To register to Pinterest Web Analytics, you need to

1. Get early access to Pinterest�s new look.
2. Verify your website, using the tools listed here.

After your website is verified, there will be an Analytics option on the top-right menu whenever you are using Pinterest.

Verifying your blog with Pinterest:

There is one slight twitch to the verification process:  As I've explained previously, Bloggers don't have access to load files to their site's root directory.   Instead we need to use the meta-tag option, currently on the bottom left of the box which opens when you choose "Verify your website" from Pinterest's settings.

The meta-tag that Pinterest gives you looks like this

<meta name="p:domain_verify" content="a-weird-collection-of-letters-and-numbers" >

Add it to your blog's template the same way you would add any other meta-tag.

If you see a message like this when you try to Preview or Save the change:

Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure that all XML elements are closed properly. <br/> XML error message: The element type "meta" must be terminated by the matching end-tag "</meta>".
Error 500

then it means is that the meta tag that Pinterest gave you has not been closed properly.   To fix it, you just need to add a "close tag" command  ( </meta> ), so that the code looks like:

<meta name="p:domain_verify" content="a-weird-collection-of-letters-and-numbers" >
</meta>

After the tag is added and you have saved your template, click the Complete Verification button in the Pinterest window, to tell Pinterest to look at your website and make the connection.

Pinterest Twitter friend notification email messages

A while ago, Pinterest removed the need to request an invitation to sign up:  you can now go to www.Pinterest.com and register immediately.

It now looks like there are three options for signing up:

• Using your Facebook account
• Using your Twitter account
• Using an email address.

(However I can't confirm that the email address works or not - it didn't the last time I tried.)


Now, if you sign up via Twitter, there'a a question at the end of the registration process about whether you want your Twitter followers to be notified that you've joined Pinterest.  I'm pretty sure that this wasn't there the last time I signed up for a Pinterest account using a Twitter account.   But I ticked it - expecting that people might get some type of notification inside Pinterest.

However what actually happens is that an email message is sent to the email account of any Twitter followers who are already on Pinterest, telling them that you have just joined and inviting them to "make you welcome" - presumably by following you on Pinterest too.

The message reads

"Hi <<recipient's Twitter account name>>
Your Twitter friend <<your Twitter account name>> just joined Pinterest.   Help welcome <<your Pinterest account name>> to the community."

I'm fairly sure that the message is only sent to Twitter followers who are already registered in Pinterest themselves - not all your Twitter followers.

But I was a little surprised by this.

Sending an email is a little more invasive than I'd expected (and maybe shows that Pinterest is looking to do things with the linking data it collected when forcing us to sign up via our existing Twitter or Facebook accounts)####

Really I don't expect my Twitter followers to be following me on Pinterest.   I'm looking for a different target audience on Pinterest, not more of the same people who are following me already.  

And I'm a little worried that Twitter followers might think I've spammed them by telling them that I've joined Pinterest.