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How to Block Your Images from Being Pinned

July 22, 2013 Uncategorized No Comments

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I will receive compensation if you click through and make a purchase.

 

How to Block Your Images from Being Pinned

With the growing popularity of Pinterest, it’s likely that people will want to pin images from your blog. Maybe you’ve even installed a pin it button to encourage readers to share your posts. But what happens if there are certain images you don’t want readers to pin?

I can think of several instances when this could be the case:

  1. The image isn’t yours. People should pin from the original source and not your site.
  2. The image is personal. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my face showing up on Pinterest.
  3. The image is part of your blog’s layout and therefore, there’s really no reason for anyone to pin it.

In order to block certain images from being pinned, all you have to do is insert this little bit of code into the html code of the image:

nopin = "nopin"

Your image code before would look like this:

<img src="your-image.png">

And after adding that piece of code it would look like this:

<img src="your-image.png" nopin="nopin">

Obviously this solution is best on an image by image basis since it would be a lot of work to add the code to every image on your site. But what if you wanted to completely prevent pinning from your site?

If you use Blogger, look for the <head> and </head> tags in your site’s template file and paste this bit of code between them:

<meta name="pinterest" content="nopin" />

Now if anyone tries to pin from your site a little pop up will appear informing them that pinning isn’t allowed. If you’d like to customize this message, use this line of code instead:

<meta name="pinterest" content="nopin" description="Enter your new description here" />

For those who use WordPress, you can install a plugin such as Pinterest Block or you can use the Blogger technique. Just look for the <head> tag in your site’s theme files. For Genesis users, you can place it in your Genesis theme settings under header and footer scripts.

Hopefully this little bit of code will come in handy!

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Comments

  1. Sharon says

    July 22, 2013 at 10:05 am

    I never knew you could do this! Thanks for the tutorial!

    -Sharon
    The Tiny Heart
    PayPal Giveaway!

    Reply
  2. Melissa says

    July 22, 2013 at 12:51 pm

    Very helpful. Thank you.

    Reply
  3. Stacey @ Likes to Smile says

    July 22, 2013 at 1:02 pm

    I had always wondered about this!! Brilliant tips!

    Reply
  4. Evani says

    July 22, 2013 at 1:56 pm

    This is great to know! Once I finally get the Pin It button installed, I’ll have to work on making sure things can’t be pinned! lol

    Reply
  5. Niki says

    July 22, 2013 at 4:08 pm

    OMG thank you!

    Reply
  6. Kuleen says

    August 28, 2013 at 9:21 pm

    Thank you for the info. I have been trying to figure out how to get my affiliate link pictures off the pin page for blog. Now they are!

    Reply
  7. Tara Jacek says

    January 9, 2014 at 12:15 pm

    So helpful! I’ve been afraid to post some personal photography because I’m not ready for it to be all over Pinterest. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
  8. Product Review Queen says

    August 15, 2014 at 5:37 pm

    Thanks so much for this information. Since I have my personal and family photos on my website, I really needed this information. Sure am glad I got it before it’s too late! Thanks Again!

    Kendria A. a.ka.
    Product Review Queen
    http://www.productreviewqueen.com

    Reply
  9. Samantha says

    September 9, 2014 at 9:33 am

    THANK YOU!! I am so sick of people pinning off my sidebar!!!

    Reply
  10. Mary Spencer says

    November 11, 2014 at 5:53 am

    I was SO happy to find this! I am sick to death of OUR stuff being all over Pinterest. I have a Blogger Blog. I was so excited to have the code and put it up…But sigh, I guess I am not as computer savvy as all the rest of you. I feel quite dumb…I went into the template, but no way could I figure out where this was supposed to go. I was terrified of just ruining my blog, so I couldn’t add it. Sure wish I had someone here that could help….
    I did see several , but not right together. There was a lot of code in between…
    I am totally out of my league, so I am so disappointed. I desperately wanted this code, and looked for it for quite awhile!

    Reply
  11. Angela says

    January 16, 2015 at 3:20 pm

    This worked great! Thank you!

    Reply
  12. Susan@LunaCafe says

    January 26, 2015 at 12:08 pm

    Just what I needed, thanks so much. 🙂

    Reply
  13. Marie says

    May 29, 2015 at 7:55 pm

    Thank you so much for this info Allyssa 🙂

    Some images can be shared and spread around the net but there are a few that I definitely would not mind keeping to myself. View it and leave it! Thank you!

    Reply
    • Allyssa says

      June 2, 2015 at 2:43 pm

      You’re welcome! I’m glad this came in handy for you!

      Reply
  14. BreAnna | Crafty Coin says

    June 15, 2015 at 5:53 pm

    Soooo helpful! My social media icons kept showing up as pinnable photos and it was bugging me so much. This worked like a charm. Thank you!!

    Reply
    • Allyssa says

      June 16, 2015 at 11:41 am

      You’re welcome! Glad I could help!

      Reply
      • Amanda Mae says

        August 18, 2015 at 10:15 am

        Do you have to put this code in for each individual picture?

        Reply
        • Allyssa Barnes says

          August 18, 2015 at 1:55 pm

          Yes, the code gets added to each picture that you don’t want pinned. If you want to block pinning completely from your site, you use the second code listed to block everything. If you go that route, then you won’t have to add code individually to each image.

          Reply
  15. Lissa says

    September 21, 2015 at 11:32 pm

    hello, thank you for sharing. but I wonder how can I remove the original ‘pin it’ button from my summary posts, for example.. http://mellowjourney.blogspot.my/search/label/cafe%20and%20restaurant#.VgDKZN-qpBf // my blog have 2 ‘Pin it’ buttons on the photo. Thank you!

    Reply
    • Allyssa Barnes says

      September 22, 2015 at 3:08 pm

      Hi Lissa. The pin it buttons aren’t showing up on my end. Could it maybe be from a browser extension?

      Reply
      • Lissa says

        September 22, 2015 at 11:11 pm

        Thank you for checking out.
        I already solved the problem yesterday.
        but I got another new problem with the thumbnail photo and post excerpts length 😀

        Thanks again!!
        http://mellowjourney.blogspot.com

        Reply
  16. Nell says

    August 19, 2016 at 10:40 am

    Well how do I selectively disable pins on images from third party sites like (related content widget, etc)

    Reply
    • Allyssa Barnes says

      August 24, 2016 at 10:08 am

      Depending on the plugin you use, they might have an option of classes to exclude. You’ll have to use the inspect element tool or a dev tool such as Firebug to find out the class that’s being applied to those third party images, then enter that class in the appropriate plugin field.

      Reply
  17. Elaina says

    September 16, 2016 at 7:55 pm

    Very clear instructions, and it works really well – thanks so much 🙂

    Reply
    • Allyssa Barnes says

      September 19, 2016 at 4:30 pm

      You’re welcome!

      Reply
  18. Amanda says

    July 21, 2017 at 9:29 am

    Thanks!! This is just what I have been looking for for our roundup posts!

    Reply
  19. Jack says

    July 26, 2017 at 4:23 am

    Adding nopin = “nopin” to my img tags, doesn’t work at all the image is still be able to be pinned.

    Reply
    • Allyssa Barnes says

      July 26, 2017 at 4:48 pm

      Hmmm, not sure why it doesn’t work. Here’s Pinterest’s page on blocking images: https://help.pinterest.com/en/articles/prevent-people-saving-things-pinterest-your-site Maybe that’ll help.

      Reply
      • rd says

        July 9, 2018 at 1:10 am

        SImple people could copy the source url for the image and then pin that and get around that nopin meta.

        Reply
  20. Adrienne says

    January 2, 2018 at 11:32 am

    Great post – thanks!

    Question…is there a way to add this code to prevent pinning of an image when you have one loaded into Social Warfare as the featured FB image?

    Reply
    • Allyssa Barnes says

      January 2, 2018 at 1:30 pm

      You should still be able to use the do not pin code on all images in a post while uploading an image to Social Warfare. They shouldn’t affect each other.

      Reply
  21. Barb says

    March 6, 2018 at 8:49 pm

    Thank you very much. Worked perfectly!

    Reply
  22. Swag says

    June 8, 2018 at 11:40 pm

    Hello,
    Thanks for this post, however the code does not work in my site.
    I use Genesis theme, and I have tried the code in the header script, I have tried it in the header widget area, I have tried the code in header.php just above but nothing stopped pinterest from saving my articles.

    Reply
  23. rd says

    July 9, 2018 at 1:08 am

    Plugin pinterest block comes up in wordfence security with a warning that it hasnt been updated over the last WP updates and appears abandoned

    Reply
  24. rd says

    July 9, 2018 at 1:16 am

    “For those who use WordPress, you can install a plugin such as Pinterest Block or you can use the Blogger technique. Just look for the tag in your site’s theme files. ”

    The problem with this is wordpress uses php code, so the files dont have the old tags , they start with <?php and inserting code somewhere without knowing what you are doing could produce a nasty surprise

    Reply

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