I once tried creating board sections and thought:

"This is a huge waste of time."

They're tedious to setup.

And you can't schedule pins to a section (without going to it first).

Ever since Pinterest launched board sections in 2017, I never thought they really helped.

Until now...?

Recently, Kate Ahl released an eye-opening podcast about board sections.

When Kate talks, I listen because she's now an official Pinterest educator, working closely with a team at Pinterest.

Her direct partnership with Pinterest gives her a new level of access and insight into the platform and what they're thinking about over there.

Here's what was most surprising from the podcast...

When Kate asked "Do board sections help with SEO and searchability on Pinterest?"

Pinterest responded with (paraphrased): Yes. It providers richer context for your content and board sections act as signals and can improve the searchability and relevancy of your pins.

In theory, board sections make sense to improve pin distribution because of relevance.

(This sub-grouping of ideas helps improve the semantic relationships).

But as we know, there’s often a big gap in reality and truth between those who are the talking heads for a company and the algorithm.

(I'm not calling Kate a talking head, I'm referring to the team at Pinterest.)

So I took this new information about board sections with a grain of salt.

Plus, if Pinterest wants their ranking systems and algorithms to give pins within sections just as much weight / value as pins within boards, they would likely have to do a major overhaul of those systems and algorithms.

Is that worth millions of dollars in engineering and compute time?

Maybe...

Only if were to improve pin relevancy and engagement within the home feed, search and related pins. (I share my theory about this near the end of this email.)

Nonetheless, I wanted to see for myself if pins on board sections currently rank in Pinterest search.

So here's what I did on May 15th, 2025 (and I'll share my findings):

I exported the top 1,000 keywords on Pinterest by search volume.

(Thanks to PinClicks Keyword Explorer tool!)

Then I searched each one on Pinterest and got the top 20 ranking pins. (Don't worry, I built a custom tool to automate this!)

That's 20,000 pins I checked.

For each pin, I checked it's board URL to see if it was on a board or a board section and if it had a value for the pin property called "section."

Note: a board section has an additional folder in it's URL, like this: pinterest. com/username/board/section/)

And the results?

0 ranking pins out of 20,000 were in a board section.

But I didn't want to just leave it at that.

I decided to work backwards to find a board section pin and see if it ranks in search.

So, I found a dozen Pinterest accounts that use board sections.

Then I took a few of their section pins and searched their pin titles in Pinterest search.

I also searched their reeeeally long pin titles where there's only a few dozen pins on that platform that would match the topic. (One was the name of a lesser-known interior designer that was in the pin title.)

And the results?

0 of those section pins ranked in Pinterest search.

Sometimes I'd see the correct pin image ranking, but it was from a different account that had repinned or stole it - and that pin was in a board, not a section - go figure!

So based on my findings, I continue to NOT recommend board sections if you want your pins to rank on Pinterest search.

Even if the talking heads at Pinterest say it's good to do that now.

Here's an important caveat:

It's possible pins within a section can rank and I did not find any because the majority of Pinterest users don't use board sections.

And maybe... just maybe...

Pinterest is putting out this board section as propaganda to increase adoption so that it will improve their recommendation systems and algorithms.

By categorizing pins into sections, we instantly help Pinterest learn about semantic and hierarchal relationships between topics, from a human's point of view.

And that's powerful labeling data that's handed to them on a silver platter for them to use in machine learning models, which powers their recommendation systems.

If you have pins within board sections that are ranking in Pinterest search, hit reply and let me know! (I'm not tied to this no-board sections policy - I'm tied to what the data shows.)

Thanks for reading :)