Pinterest Localizes Search For Its Large International Audience

Focusing on international growth, Pinterest has updated its search to improve the experience for Pinners abroad.

Last month, the visual discovery network announced that it has 100 million active users and now says that nearly half are outside the US. The growth rate is higher internationally, and CEO Ben Silbermann recently said that improving the experience for international users is a priority for the company.

To help that effort, the company is customizing search by language and country, showing people more relevant and localized search results depending on their settings and the language they typically use to search. Search results will also be based on what is trending in a country. So now when someone in Brazil searches for football — or futbol — he or she will get different results than someone who searches for football from the US.

Pinterest is also adding international auto-complete and spell-check to the platform. The new features are being rolled out first in France, Germany, Brazil and Japan.

In testing, the company said in a blog post, people in Brazil, France, Germany and Japan are Pinning twice as many local Pins after searching.