Pinterest business account: how to set one up and what you get

Updated October 22, 2026 · 6 min read

What a business account gives you

Pinterest's own description is short: set up a free business account to get access to analytics on your pins and the ability to run ads. The full list is longer. A business account is what unlocks:

• Pinterest Analytics: impressions, saves, pin clicks, outbound clicks and audience data for your pins.
• Audience insights: who engages with your pins, by age, gender, location, device and interests.
• Pinterest Trends: two years of relative search history by region.
• Website claiming: your name and picture on every pin saved from your site.
• Ads, the paid partnership tool, product catalogs and the Verified Merchant Program if you sell.

Nothing about a business account makes pins rank higher by itself. What it does is show you what is working, which is the only way to do more of it. It also puts your name on content you did not pin: once your site is claimed, every pin anyone saves from one of your pages credits your profile, which is free distribution you cannot get any other way.

Option 1: create a new business account

Use this when you want a clean account for a brand, separate from any personal pinning.

1. Go to pinterest.com and click Sign up.
2. Choose Create a business account.
3. Enter your email, a password and your age. The email must not already belong to another Pinterest account.
4. Fill in the profile screen and the business description screen.
5. Choose whether you want to run ads. You can say no and change your mind later.
6. Choose where to start. Pinterest will suggest next steps such as claiming a website.

Pinterest's help page describes this flow from a desktop browser, so start there rather than in the app.

Option 2: convert a personal account

Use this when you already have pins and followers you want to keep. Two things to check first: a private account has to be made public, because business accounts are public, and if the personal account is linked to another Pinterest account you need to unlink it before converting.

On desktop

1. Log in and click the more-options icon at the bottom left.
2. Select Settings.
3. Choose Account management.
4. Under Convert to a business account, click Convert account and confirm.
5. Complete the profile, business description and ads steps.

In the app

1. Tap your profile picture, then your profile photo again.
2. Tap Account management.
3. Tap Convert to a business account, then Convert account.
4. Enter your profile name, your website URL (or skip it), your business type and your ads preference.

Your pins and followers stay exactly as they were. If you later decide a business account is not for you, the same Account management screen lets you switch back. One caution from Pinterest's community staff: switching from business to personal and back again can reset your analytics, so do not toggle it casually.

Set up the profile so search can read it

The profile fields are indexed by Pinterest search, so they are worth five minutes.

For the longer version of how each field affects search, see Pinterest profile SEO.

Claim your website

Claiming proves to Pinterest that a domain is yours. Once it is claimed, every pin anyone saves from your site shows your profile picture and a follow option, the pin links to your profile, and Analytics shows you how often content from your site is saved. A site can be claimed by only one Pinterest account, and you need to own the domain (or subdomain or subpath) and be able to edit its source code.

That ownership rule is why Pinterest says you cannot claim most social accounts or shops hosted on marketplaces such as Etsy, eBay or Amazon. If your shop lives on one of those, claim your own site instead and link the shop from your profile.

Where to find it: Settings, then Link to Pinterest (some accounts see Claimed accounts), then Claim next to Websites.

Pinterest offers four methods. Pick the one you can do.

Each claimed domain is treated separately unless the domains route to the same place, so claim the one you actually publish on.

Add rich pins

Rich pins pull live details from your page onto the pin. There are three types:

• Article: the headline or title, the description and the author.
• Recipe: title, serving size, cook time, ratings, diet preference and ingredients.
• Product: current price, availability and product information.

The setup is only markup. Add Open Graph or Schema.org tags between the <head> tags of each page (for recipes, Schema.org or h-recipe). Most blogging platforms and shop systems add these for you through an SEO plugin or the theme. There is no application or validation step on Pinterest's current help page: once the tags are there, new pins saved from the page become rich pins, and Pinterest says it may take up to 24 hours for the content to sync.

To keep a specific page from producing rich pins, add this tag to that page only:

<meta name="pinterest-rich-pin" content="false" />

Check any page before you pin it with our validator, which reads the tags the same way Pinterest does and tells you what is missing.

A ten-minute checklist after setup

• Business account created or converted, and public.
• Display name includes your main topic; bio uses it in the first sentence.
• Website claimed, and a test pin from your site shows your profile picture.
• Rich pin tags present on your article, recipe or product pages.
• Analytics opens from the menu (web: hamburger icon, Analytics, Overview).
• At least one board created with a keyword name, so your first pins have somewhere to go.

Questions people ask at this point

Does a business account show up differently to people? It can show your website, a verified badge if you join the Verified Merchant Program, and a paid partnership label on sponsored pins. Otherwise it looks like any other profile.

Can I have both a personal and a business account? Yes, on different emails. Pinterest no longer lets you link them, so you log out and in to switch. Most people find one business account with a few private boards does the job.

Which features need a desktop? Audience insights, comparing audiences, CSV exports and approving paid partnership tags are desktop only, and Pinterest Trends works in a desktop or mobile browser rather than the app.

I converted and my analytics are empty. Analytics start from the conversion and the account needs a few days of activity before the Overview has anything to show. Publish your first pins and check back in a week.

Where to go next

• How to use Pinterest for business, step by step
• Pinterest boards: create, organize and clean up
• Pinterest analytics explained
• Pinterest marketing: the complete guide