How Do I Delete a Pin from my Pinterest Account? (And, Is It Worth the Effort?) 

Hello, fellow Pinterest business owners! Today, I want to talk about a hot topic that people ask me quite often: how do you delete a pin on Pinterest? As our businesses grow and change, it is inevitable that we have unwanted Pins from the past that no longer reflect who we are or the products and services we offer. Maybe you changed your branding (or even your name), or maybe the URL the Pin points to is no longer active. Whatever the reason you have Pinterest Pins you no longer want on your account, I can help! So, let’s get into my comprehensive guide about how to delete old Pins and the pros and cons of doing so. 

Should I delete old Pins?

Like so much other advice I have given you about your Pinterest profile, the answer is…it depends! 

How many individual Pins do you have?

Whether or not you should focus your energy on deleting old Pins first depends on the size of your Pinterest account. Let’s say you are running a new account and only have 30-500 Pins. In this case, it is easy enough to delete the few that link to dead links and are not set up to redirect. If this is your situation, go ahead and delete those Pins with a quick deleting spree! A new (usually smaller) account with a lot of dead links could cause Pinterest to mark you as spam. So, it might be worth deleting them. 

What if you have a larger account?

If you are one of the power pinners with 30,000+ Pins, it would take you hours and hours to go back and find all the Pins with dead links or expired content and delete them. In this case, my advice is “don’t bother”. This is certainly part of my own best practices for how I handle my account! It is not worth that much time to go back and find every Pin that no longer serves me. Pinterest is more forgiving of older (and therefore usually larger) Pinterest accounts. This means you do not need to worry as much about getting marked as spam because of a few Pins with dead links. 

So, should you delete old Pins that don’t work for you anymore? If there are just a few and it is no trouble, then sure! Go back through your account and delete them manually. If you are sifting through 100,000 Pins and it is a gargantuan task that would take up a considerable amount of your time and energy, no. Don’t worry about it. Just move on. Focus your energy on creating new Pin content that is optimized for search and leave those old Pins alone.

How to delete a Pin on Pinterest?

So, you’ve decided you have just a few old Pins that you would like to make disappear with the delete option. How do you do that? It’s really quite simple. But before you follow these step-by-step instructions for deleting Pins, remember that once a Pin has been deleted, it CANNOT be recovered. So, be absolutely certain this is what you want to do! The first step is logging in to your account and going to your profile image in the top right corner of your screen. Then: 

1. Find the Pin you want to delete (this is easier if you are on desktop or a laptop computer)
2. Open the Pin by clicking on it 
3. Click the “…” button and then “Edit Pin” (the pencil icon) – see below for an example.

4. Hit “Delete” at the bottom left corner of your screen (twice, as it will ask you confirm)

And this is what you will see:

Why can’t I delete a Pinterest pin?

Maybe you’ve gotten this far and tried to follow my instructions without success, and that Pin just won’t delete! Of all the possible reasons for this, two are most common. 

1. You are not the owner of the Pin: Only the original Pinterest content creator can edit Pins! So make sure you are only trying to delete your own Pins. To complicate things even further, if someone pins from your website to their board, you can’t delete that. A saved Pin is not technically your Pin. You can only delete pins that you yourself have pinned, even if those others have saved are technically “yours”. 
2. You are trying to delete a copy of the Pin: You can only delete a Pin if it is the original. So, make sure you are searching your own boards. And even then, you could have issues! For example, if you pinned your content to one board and then repinned it to another board, you need to delete the original and not the repinned version. 

Do you see why I recommend leaving your old Pins alone if there are more than just a few? This gets complicated so fast!  Sometimes the fastest way to deal with old Pins is to just let them be.

How do I delete a pin from my Pinterest home feed?

Now you know what Pins you can and can’t delete. Are you wondering if there is a way to get rid of Pins in your main feed that you have no control over? Yes! Your feed shows you specific Pins from people, topics, and boards that you follow and that the algorithm thinks you would be interested in seeing. If it turns out the algorithm is wrong and you DON’T want to see them, no problem! You can easily hide Pins and this is how: 

1. Click the “…” on the bottom right corner of the Pin you don’t want to see
2. Then click “Hide Pin” and choose your reason for hiding the selected Pin. This will help the algorithm show you more Pins you DO want to see.

Why should I keep old Pins? 

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule! Sometimes it makes sense to keep old Pins, and not just because there are too many to delete. 

Occasionally, your content might be dead only because you have made a big change to your brand. Maybe you changed your specific domain and your name! In this case, you can reach out to Pinterest support and work alongside a support member to have everything flipped over to a new website. This might cause your Pinterest stats to suffer in the short term. But it would be worth it if your brand is changing substantially. NOTE: You do NOT want to do a mass redirect of all your content on your own from one website to a new one. You will get marked as spam. If it’s a LOT of Pins that you really want to redirect (or delete), reach out to Pinterest and they can change or strike out those Pins for you. 

Another situation that could occur is that the content of the Pin is still good and it has good engagement, but the URL is dead. In these cases, the Pin doesn’t need to be deleted entirely, just changed. If this is the case, you can go to the original instance of that Pin (wherever it first existed) and edit it and change the URL or redirect the link elsewhere. NOTE: It’s OK to have a few Pins that redirect, but you don’t want too many. That could cause Pinterest to mark your account as spam. 

How do I edit old Pins?

Have you decided it makes the most sense to edit your Pin rather than delete it? All you need to do is follow a few simple steps. Once you are logged in, go to your profile picture at the top right corner of your screen. Then:

1. Find the Pin you want to edit 
2. Open the Pin by clicking on it 
3. Click the three dots, and then “Edit Pin” (the pencil icon)
4. Update whatever you want to edit! (Most likely the website link, but you have more options.)

Just like deleting Pins, you can only edit your own Pins at their source. You cannot edit re-pinned Pins or any that you have saved from elsewhere. And remember that it is best to link directly to the source. Pinterest doesn’t allow certain redirects or URL shorteners, so linking right to the website you want Pinterest users to visit is the best way to make sure your links work properly.

And that’s the end of my how to delete a Pin from Pinterest tutorial! Hopefully you have a better sense of when to spend time deleting old Pins and when to leave them alone and why. If you feel like you need even more help with your pinning and new content strategy, check out my Pin Marketing Toolkit! Say goodbye to not being sure of what to do or what works, or wondering how to get the same results you see other online business owners getting. This traffic-driving powerhouse is just what you need. You won’t regret it! It is the budget friendly Pinterest Toolkit that will help you to get better results on Pinterest in the shortest time possible.