Is your Pinterest account suspended for spam or for no reason at all? Unfortunately, this happens. In this blog post, I will show and guide you what you should do to reactivate your account and to prevent future problems on Pinterest.
HOW CAN YOU GET BANNED FROM PINTEREST?
If you are using Pinterest as a content creator getting banned from Pinterest is a big deal for you, more than for any regular user. This means, you have a website, blog or social media platforms like Instagram, Youtube account associated with your Pinterest profile and you want to promote your content and drive traffic from Pinterest. Pinterest suspended my account for spam by mistake (as they confirmed) a few times so far, so I can tell you quite a lot from my personal experience about how to unsuspend your Pinterest profile.
If a regular user gets into trouble on Pinterest, the worst-case scenario for him is that his boards and images saved on them will be lost. But a regular user can always create a new account and keep saving ideas on Pinterest.
On this website, I feature a select number of partners and companies that have products that could help my audience. When you purchase something through my partner links, I might get paid for the referral at no extra cost to you. Read the full disclosure here.
On this website, I feature a select number of partners and companies that have products that could help my audience. When you purchase something through my partner links, I may receive a small commission for the referral at no extra cost to you. Read the full disclosure here.
Best Practices to Follow on Pinterest
There are a few best practices to follow when using Pinterest for your business.
- First, make sure to include keywords in your descriptions so that people can easily find your pins.
- Also, be sure to pin interesting and high-quality images that will capture people’s attention.
- Save no more than 20-25 pins a day (recommended by Tailwind, the authorized Pinterest scheduler).
- Create high-quality content for your site regularly so that you can “feed” Pinterest with new pins linked to new pages.
- Finally, it’s important to be active on Pinterest and repin other users’ new content to build up a following.
By following these best practices and modifying your own pinning strategy, you can use Pinterest as a powerful marketing tool for your business.
However, following Pinterest best practices is not always enough as you should also know what NOT to do that can be marked as spam.
Additionally, you should also be aware that Pinterest has a very active flagging system. If enough users report a piece of content as spam, it will be marked as spam and you may lose your account.
Here are some examples of what NOT to do on Pinterest:
- Don’t use all capital letters in your descriptions or board names. This is considered shouting and is rude.
- Don’t use more than 20 hashtags per pin. This is considered spammy behavior and will get you flagged. You are better off not using hashtags at all (currently they have no role in Pinterest algorithm).
- Don’t create too many pins with affiliate links or linked to sites that are selling something illegal. These links will be removed and you may get flagged as spam.
- Don’t add random comments on other people’s pins just to get your name out there. This is called comment spamming and it’s a sure way to get yourself reported and flagged as spam.
- Don’t try messaging Pinterest users in mass, especially with the same exact text and links to your site. Just 3-4 messages like this per day can get you in trouble.
- Don’t save repetitive pins with the same link 100 times a day. More than once a day is too much. Instead, just consistently make fresh pins.
However, for a content creator getting banned from Pinterest means that their domain or account is marked (flagged) and unless Pinterest removes it, there is no way the same website will ever create a new account and start driving traffic from Pinterest again.
If you want more people to follow the rules, please share this post on your social media and save it to your Pinterest board. Thank you so much for spreading the word!
What happens when your Pinterest account is suspended?
Your Pinterest profile may be suspended for a number of reasons, including spamming, inappropriate content, or violating Pinterest’s terms of service and Community Guidelines. If your account got suspended, you will not be able to log in or access your account.
If you used a business account on Pinterest, the problem is you might have your website verified on this account, so you won’t be able to verify it again, so you HAVE to get your account resuspended if you want to keep using Pinterest for traffic. Another problem is if your username reflects your brand name, if you were to start a new account, your username will be stuck with the Pinterest suspended account.
How long is an account suspended?
If you violate Pinterest’s Terms of Service, your account may be suspended. The length of the suspension will depend on the severity of the violation. In most cases though, it’s not worth waiting that your suspension will be lifted automatically. It may take months if not years, so it’s really worth taking action and I’ll show you later in this post what exactly you can do.
HOW TO REACTIVATE SUSPENDED PINTEREST ACCOUNT?
First, no need to panic if your account is suspended and you are a genuine content creator and not a spammer. Just remember that all platforms, especially those in the active growth and development stage (as Pinterest) can have system glitches and mistakes.
STEPS TO GET YOUR ACCOUNT REINSTATED ASAP
Step 1. Keep Calm
Take 10 minutes for a short meditation, or breath deep, or count to 100. I’m not joking, it is the very first thing you HAVE to do before anything else in your situation.
I know how it feels when all your hard work on Pinterest is canceled in a moment and you feel it’s so unfair when hundreds of real spammers are out there stealing your pins and scraping your content automatically, yet you are the one suspended from Pinterest.
I know this. I’ve been in your shoes. But I also know for sure that your email requests and appeals will be at some point read by humans who have emotions too. The person reading your email is just a support representative who has nothing to do with the Pinterest algorithm update, has no control over spam filters, but has the power of decision to reinstate your account or keep it shut.
Now tell me if it’s wise to throw all your anger and frustration at THAT person or if it’s better to write an email that is professional, and polite and that shows your appreciation of Pinterest as a platform that brings you free traffic. If you advertise on Pinterest, mention that too, not as a reproach but to show how much trust you put into Pinterest.
Make it clear that you are a legit content creator, and mention you are using only authorized schedulers (or only manually pinning). If you suspect you might have mistakenly done something wrong that triggered spam filters, apologize for that. Say that you might have made a mistake but you’ll be very careful going forward. I will mention later in this article what are the possible reasons for suspensions.
If you open your profile and see a ton of repetitive pins published lately, clearly Pinterest’s support will also see them. Before sending a request to support, it makes sense to do a clean-up and delete pins that look the same or are linked to the same URLs (in case they were published back-to-back or really close to each other).
Step 2. Appeal Your Account Suspension
Here is a message from Pinterest that you will see once your account has been suspended or flagged for spam:
To get your account reactivated, go to the Pinterest Help Center Contact page and select the issue (Appeal =>> Account Suspension). An example of a message you can use or follow is:
“Hello, Pinterest team! I believe my Pinterest account was mistakenly suspended for spam even though I have done nothing as such. I assure you that I have never committed spam or any activity that goes against your Community Guidelines on purpose. I’m an active and honest member of Pinterest’s creator community. I consistently post new and original content for pinners to enjoy and have been able to grow a following and community ever since I started on this platform. If any suspicious activity has been detected on my account, please know that it was unintentional and I was never aware of it. Please do take a careful look and review of my account and reinstate it. This is a huge concern for me as Pinterest has helped me grow my brand. Thank you so much for your time!”
Note: if you received an email notification about the penalty, most probably you will find in it that your account was suspended. If your site was blocked, you should also know because that’s what all your pins will be showing if you try to open them.
STEP 3. BE PATIENT WHILE IN PINTEREST JAIL
Wait 2-5 business days (Pinterest doesn’t reply on weekends) to get some feedback. They will most likely send you an automated email at first. It might take longer but unfortunately, you will just have to wait. If you didn’t hear back in 2-3 weeks, it makes sense contacting Pinterest support team again.
STEP 4. DON’T PANIC IF THE ANSWER IS “NO”
If you received an email reply that is not signed by a person’s name, and if you received it within a couple of days, that’s probably the canned response signed by “Pinterest team”.
The problem with these canned responses is they are worded in a really scary way. They might say the decision is final and your account will not be reinstated, however, in many cases, people got their accounts back after “final decisions” pretty soon.
You can still reach out to Pinterest team using other reasons (rather than always using the appeal form). If you are using Promoted pins, you can select as a reason to submit a new request. Tell them something like this: “Please review my account, I’ve been following all the spam policies and I believe my account might have been caught by the anti-spam filters incorrectly. I’m afraid my account was mistakenly banned. I’d like to use Pinterest ads but I can’t access my account and I don’t even have access to my previous invoices which I need for accounting purposes”.
I can’t promise that a request like this could result in immediate account reactivation. But typically, the advertising department is interested in keeping more advertisers on the platform.
They don’t have any insight on why this happened to you and they can’t fix it but usually, the response is quite fast and you can tell it’s not a canned response. Something along the lines: “We’ll forward your request to the responsible team”. Then it could take another few weeks until you get your account back.
What is the Difference Between Account Suspension and a Blocked Site
In rare cases, Pinterest might block a website instead of suspending an account. These are two different types of penalties.
The majority of cases I’ve seen reported by other users were the first type of suspension: the account profile link would not be searchable on Pinterest, the account owner would not have access to his profile, but all links from pins saved on Pinterest by other users would be still active and driving traffic to the website.
My own website was once affected by the second and very rare situation when Pinterest blocks the website. It was a quite known glitch in the middle of summer 2018 when hundreds of legit website owners noticed they were blocked on Pinterest overnight (no email notifications were sent when that happened). Pinterest confirmed it was a glitch and reinstated all the accounts within 24-48 hours.
What happens in this case – all the limitations described above for the account suspension, but on top of that, all existing pins linked to that domain are returning an error notifying users that the website is blocked for spam.
This happens to all pins including those saved by the account owner and all repins linked to the same website. The result of getting your domain blocked is drastic: all traffic from Pinterest stops immediately and goes to literally 0.
How to prevent your account from being suspended
Pinterest profiles get suspended because they either get flagged by other users or receive too many DMCA complaints because they trigger some spam filters and sometimes it happens as a result of the system glitch.
We don’t know all the back-end details about Pinterest’s spam filters, but some information has been shared over time by users who have experienced one penalty or another. I will make a summary below of all types of mistakes that can lead your account to suspension (also called Pinterest Jail).
- Read Pinterest’s Community Guidelines page – everything that you’ll find on this page is very important and violations of these rules can get your account suspended. I would recommend you read the Spam policy and Quality section especially carefully.
- Use a business account and verify your domain if you use it to promote a website. Personal accounts used for commercial purposes are frequently shut down. You can also convert from personal account to business without losing your followers. Read here everything about creating business accounts and enabling rich pins.
- Don’t use direct messages to spam other users. This is a very bad idea, especially if you send links inside those messages. Even if users don’t flag you, Pinterest seems to have spam filters that get triggered by this behavior. At least, in one of the cases when a blogger claimed her account was suspended for no reason, eventually someone from Pinterest replied her account was penalized for sending messages with requests to get into group boards. She probably added links to her site with those requests. If you want to apply to group boards, try to find those that give you an email address for requests.
- Don’t comment too much the same text under pins, especially with links to your website. This is pure evil spam.
- Don’t use images of unknown origin and don’t use images you didn’t purchase. This one is serious. I believe that after 3 DMCA complains your site can be suspended. Yes, mistakes happen and I’ve seen reports of bloggers who claim they never used images from other sites, but someone reported them several times in a short period of time and they suspect those might have been competitors.
I’m Anastasia and I’m a full-time blogger, online entrepreneur, and Pinterest marketing strategist. I help digital entrepreneurs and bloggers drive targeted traffic from Pinterest either through my online courses or through Pinterest consultancy.
Comments 32
Dear Anastasia,
Thank you for your informative post.
I have two blogs and Pinterest suspended my account accusing me of being a spammer.
I am an ethical-working blogger and I have never been a spammer.
My boards contained only very quality content (belonging to me and to other people)
I think it’s a sort of algorithm fault.
I have clearly explained the situation to Pinterest team and I have asked them to review my account and all my boards. After 2 days, someone from Pinterest team responded me that they have decided no to reactivate my account.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. Since I am not a spammer, I consider this action as an outrage. The spammers are on Pinterest and the ethical-working bloggers’ accounts are suspended. This is definitely unacceptable.
I feel extremely frustrated and nervous. Some people advise me to contact my lawyer, others advise to find an information technologies expert.
What is your advice to me? Should I ask the formal review of my account by experts? Thank you for your time and consideration.
Author
Hi, I am so sorry to hear this. Unfortunately, this is not a rare occurrence on Pinterest as this has happened to many users and bloggers as well. First, did the reply come with a reason why they do not want to reactivate your account? Maybe you can ask that. You can do any of the actions you have said or you can also file a complaint on https://www.bbb.org/. I found an article wherein they filed a complaint and they forwarded it to Pinterest. The account was reactivated in no time. Let me know how it works for you!
I use Pinterest to find knitting patterns for knitting projects for knitting hats for charity and infants in hospitals. Now I can`t save the patterns like I could do in the past. I am not very computer literate, I see other people view what I save, I don’t know how to do this. How can I gat back to being able to save knitting patterns again
Author
Hi, Pinterest does updates but it is not always a drastic change. You can still save pins through their Save button. It is on the upper page on desktop, and below the pin title on mobile. You can also search for more knitting patterns on Pinterest’s search field. Hope this helps!
Recently join Pinterest and tailwind under you, love to avoid suspension completely, but I got really confuse how many pin I should do daily? It’d be great if you could help.
Author
That depends on how much content on your site you have to link to. If you have a lot of content and you can avoid saving pins linked to the same URL more than once a day, you could save 10-30 pins a day for a good pace.
Great article! My anxiety is subdued for the moment. My account was suspended at the beginning of January 2020 for supposedly violating community guidelines. The message said that I was emailed the reason why but I never received such email. 100% of my repins are other people’s pins. I don’t spam or post. This is my therapy. I have dozens of boards ranging from arts and crafts, cats, sewing, quotes, dolls, food, home and leisure and mental health etc. I routinely get emails informing me that pins were removed from my boards but they are other people’s pins and I have no idea if a pin violates the rules. Needless to say it stresses me because I haven’t gotten any answers. To make things even weirder, I got an email from Pinterest telling me someone has reported me for suicide or mental watch????? What the he##! I have literally posted dolls, miniatures, cats and quotes. I don’t know a soul on Pinterest personally and I love my life
I am happy so I don’t know if it’s a joke or what.
There was this one woman who seemed like trouble on the cats board but that was awhile ago. She seemed to dislike my happy post of a baby suggling with a cat. I LOVE cats and posted something to the effect that the cat was the baby’s guardian angel and what kinda conversation the two would have. Like garlic on a vampire this women had to let me know that no such thing could happen. I responded to Debbie Downer in a lighthearted manner (I didn’t call her that BTW) as did others who thought she was out of line. Anyways I have never had any bad experiences with anyone. My account has over 8,000+ followers. Sorry for the long winded comments. I’m just in withdrawal. ?
Author
Hi, Kiki! I hope Pinterest restored your account by now, don’t give up and try to appeal again. I’ve never seen a case when Pinterest support would specifically say WHY your account was suspended, and this reason is the weirdest I could imagine. But it’s true that Pinterest has in their community guidelines something about harm to other people’s health.
Hi, I have a question. My pinterest account got suspended and after appealing, I was told it would not be reactivated. And I claimed my website on that account. Now I created a new pinterest account and can’t claim my website. Will it affect my potential pinterest traffic or do I need to register a different domain?
Author
Unfortunately, if your account is flagged, there is no way the same website will ever create a new account and start driving traffic from Pinterest again. You might just have to register a different domain or contact Pinterest about this. Hope this helps!
Minha conta foi suspensa e eles não aceitaram minha apelação.
Tinha umas pessoas subindo minhas imagens para o perfil delas e quando eu encontrava denunciava para o pinterest.
Acredito que tenha cido isso.ao invés de cancelar a conta do spamers, eles,cancelaram a minha.. Não sei mais o que fazer.
Acho muito injusto por que minha imagens continuam rodando n pinterest e meus seguidores devem achar que eu estou deixando links quebrados.
I was promoting a new webpage and then my account was suspended. I emailed Pinterest and apologized. I said I would be more careful. They then blocked my account with a generic: it’s spam which violates our policies, etc. It seemed very generic and unforgiving. I will use the advice in this article to help me get back onto Pinterest. Thank-you.
Hello
Did you manage to get your account back? I just got suspended recently. I am really sad that it happens… I even bought the course to drive traffic but didn’t notice that it will get suspended… should have signed up for Anastasia’s course 🙁
Hi Anastasia. Thank you for the great article! Both my website and my Pinterest account were blocked. It ttok me 2 weeks to get through their bot customre service, I was writing endless appeals to their system. Finally after 2 weeks I got unblocked. But my traffic is lost! If before the block I was receiving 700 – 800 visits per day from Pinterest, now I only get 50. When I check for search terms that I used to be ranked number 1, now my pins are not shown. Instead I see lots of pins that are stolen from me, and they rank for this terms. This is so unfair and so disappointing! Dear Anastasia, please, share, how did you get your traffic back? Inna
Author
First off, I am so sorry that you have your account suspended and people have stolen some pins from you. Unfortunately, I have no other advice for you but to really just pin consistently and more mindfully of course. This means pinning for about 15-25 pins a day with relevant keywords and high-quality images. Just be consistent and I’m sure you will get your traffic back!
This blog post has given me hope! I’m a new blogger and recently created a business Pinterest. After creating my first pin that’s linked to my blog, it was taken down and then my account was suspended right after. The Pinterest Team was very short and said it’s spam, read our guidelines. After reading the guideline… I still have no idea what I did! I’ve appealed and asked for more explanation. My fingers are crossed! I hope it gets sorted out. Thank you for writing this!
hi, this is a really helpful post, My account is not suspended but I just started using Pinterest. After My Quora account ban, I’m afraid of any policy violation so I was just getting information when the accounts are banned usually. So that I can avoid those mistakes. My Quora profile had Five Millions of Content views but now it is banned permanently.
My account got suspended for spamming. But after contacting them continuously I got my account back.
Hi,
My impressions have dropped to almost 0, so I contacted Pinterest. They told me that they had found a bug in their system that had accidentally marked my account as spam and that they were working to fix it and that it should take a couple of days to put right. That was on the 16th November. I contacted them again on the 21st and they said they couldn’t tell me how long it would take for my account to be put right because it will depend on when their system updates. Today is the 28th and there is still no improvement. What do you recommend I do?
Hi there! Were they able to get back to you about this? Keep sending new requests and try other reasons (not always appealing) – try for example “can’t login to my account” or “business account setup”. They may have overlooked it as they get hundreds of appeals per day.
Hello,
I have a business account with Pinterest for my YouTube channel. As I was deleting old pins because I removed old videos from my YouTube, I was kicked out and realized I was suspended. However, I never received an email as to why. It happened over this weekend. I have been sending multiple messages being polite asking to be reinstated. I don’t believe I purposefully violated their policies. How long will it take for them to reinstate my account? I am waiting to hear back from someone. How long does this take? Is there another way to reach out because the service email no longer works? I appealed through the site.
Hi there! I would suggest to keep sending new requests and try other reasons (not always appealing) – try for example “can’t login to my account” or “business account setup”. They do receive tons of messages and appeal so may overlook yours at times.
Amazing Article
I too was suspended for “spam” although I really dont know what I did wrong. I’ve decided not to try to get reinstated because it could happen again. I would constantly worry that it would happen again no matter how hard I try to do everything right. Pinterest should at least give you a warning and explain what you did wrong. It is so unfair. I feel really bad for other bloggers who have worked so hard to be arbitrarily suspended without warning or proper recourse.
Author
Well, I had my website blocked on Pinterest twice in 4 years, yet it was back live because they can see the site is not spammy. It can be stressful but the benefits of getting free traffic from Pinterest are way too high to ignore the platform.
My Pinterest account was suspended and considered as spam, I was mistakely added same photo for more than 2 times so my account was considered as spam by Pinterest AI, I already appeal my account but only Pinterest bot was reviewed my account and not reactivated. Can you help me
Author
Unfortunately, I can’t help you. I don’t work for Pinterest. Try to reach out to support many times, it’s often working on 3 or 4th time.
I just started using pinterest and my account got suspended.
Seems like now the pinterest rules are getting stricter.
So sad.
Author
It can be easy to fix, just try to reach out to Pinterest support.
My another account has got suspended a month ago. I have been writing emails to Pinterest but haven’t got any fruitfull response. Just their reply is we will get back to you soon. Please advise. I haven’t been spam at all. Will they reactivate my account?? 🥺🥺🥺
Author
Yes usually they get back to you with good news if you haven’t been really spamming.
My account was suspended. It’s just a personal account, not a business/blogger/content creator thing. I have not idea what I did wrong; I’ve been in Pinterest for 10+ years, and have never been suspended. I’ve completed the Contact steps, and am trying to be patient.
I’m incredibly bummed, as Pinterest is my unwinding & relaxing activity, as well as the place where I’ve saved so much info & misc. content for myself. If anyone has any tips, guidance, advice & stories, please let me know. Thanks.