As Pinterest continues to expand its use case, one common issue reflected in its search trends is that users are looking to narrow down their results by their own skin tone, in order to find the exact right Pin matches for them.  

As explained by Pinterest:

"Last year, nearly 60% of the top 100 search terms for skin-related searches involved a tone, such as dark skin, pale skin, and olive skin, which showed us women of all skin types wanted a way to customize their searches."

And given the usage of the platform for beauty-related searches, it makes sense that Pinterest is now looking to better facilitate such discovery, with the expansion of its 'skin tone' search qualifier to hone in on more relevant search results.

As you can see in the above example, on-platform searches for terms like “beauty tips”, “eyeshadow”, and “glossy makeup” will now provide you with a tappable 'skin tone' option to narrow down your search. Once selected, users will be able to choose their skin tone, resulting in more relevant Pin matches in their results.

"Each palette represents a range of skin tones, with more to come. The more you search, the more personalized your home feed and recommendations will become."

Pinterest actually began testing the option on its web version last year, but it's now expanding it to the mobile app as well, bringing the qualifier to "millions of searches". The project is also part of Pinterest's broader Inclusion & Diversity initiative, which aims to provide more options for people of all backgrounds.

"Pinners shouldn’t have to do extra work like add keywords to find personally relevant ideas. And so the teams got together, listened to Pinner feedback, and worked on improving our machine learning technologies for more diverse results, which continues to evolve. Increasing engagement with beauty Pins is just a start in making all results more representative of a range of looks and styles."

It's an interesting project, not only from the important perspective of inclusion, but also from a search personalization standpoint. And with Pinterest now serving more than 250 million monthly active users, the platform's catering to an increasing amount of discovery behavior - if you haven't checked out Pinterest in a while, it's worth taking a look at what's on offer on the platform, specifically within your brand niche, to get an understanding of whether it might be a good fit for your digital marketing initiatives.

Considering ways to provide options for all people, of all backgrounds, is a worthy exercise for any business, but it may be even more relevant for online platforms. As we look to better connect the world, inclusion is a key consideration. In this respect, Pinterest's project is a valuable leader which aims to provide more options for a wider range of users.