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How to Fix Pinterest ‘We Couldn’t Find Any Images:No Usable Images Found’ Error?

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Topics: Tips & Tricks

Pinterest has certainly been hottest topic of discussion on the web offlate. It is revolutionizing the way in which we are sharing the interesting things we find on web. A picture is worth a thousand words is the driving force behind this social networking site. For those who are new to it, Pinterest is pinboard-styled visual bookmarking, social photo sharing website. It allows you to create and categorise images as boards where you can pin things you like. It is still not open to all only invited users can join the site, adding an exclusivity factor to it. You can get an instant invite to Pinterest from us by commenting here.

Internet marketers, bloggers and content writers have started making the most of this site because it is said to generate nearly more referral traffic than Google+, You Tube and LinkedIn put together!

fix pinterest we couldn't find any images error

In this article we are going to see a solution to one of the annoying errors of Pinterest. In order to pin an article you need toenter the URL and then click Find Images. Pinterest grabs hold of some images available on the page from which you can select the one you like and then add a description and post it on your boards. But sometimes you end up getting this error “We Couldn’t Find Any Images:No Usable Images Found“. It really does frustrate you because even though the page has many to be shown the Pinterest does not seem to pick up any of the image but instead shows this irritating error message, preventing you from pining! I am not sure if this is some sort of a bug but lets see how to overcome this.

How to Fix Pinterest We Couldn’t Find Any Images:No Usable Images Found Error?

1. Whenever you come across this error the simplest alternative to overcome this is to use “Pin It” bookmarklet.

← Drag and Drop this bookmarklet on to your Bookmarks Toolbar.Pin It Button

If you are not sure on how to install the Bookmarklet follow the below video demo.

Now visit the page for which you got the error message and click on the Bookmarklet. Voila! You get all the images in the page and you can select the one you want and pin it as usual.

2. If even the above method does not work you can always manually upload the pin. Download any pic you want from the page. Click Upload a Pin and select the pic you downloaded then add description and pin it.

Note: Most of the time I got the problem resolved with first method.

So, were you able to fix this annoying error of Pinterest? Which method worked for you? Know any other alternate solution to this problem?

47 Comments For This Post I'd Love to Hear Yours!

  1. I’m sorry, but this article was a bit misleading. I assumed that since this is a Tech blog, this would be an article about something to do on your website side of things to fix this issue. I think people understand there are various ways to “pin” things, but from a developer’s perspective, it would be nice to know how to fix this on a problematic site where this is occurring. The question I have is “Why do I get that message?” What is pinterest looking for on my site that I don’t have that makes it think there are no images? Is this a pinterest bug or a problem with my site? I expected these sort of answers to be addressed in those post and I felt the need to comment as such.

    • Shunmugha Sundaram says:

      Thanks a lot Brian DiChiara for your comment and the question you put up. Though it is a Tech blog I sometimes do have to address problems faced by common novice users in their day to day life. This is one such article. Many of my friends weren’t aware that using Pinterest Bookmarlet could put an end to this error. So could be the case of many. Hence I thought of writing about it. Sorry about the fact it wasn’t answering from developer perspective. To answer your query I did a small trail and error experiment here are some insights.

      1. The size of the images play a key role for Pinterest to recognize it.
      2. The validation of client side code (Bookmarklet) seems to be liberal compared to server side validation done when you click Find Images. Hence the reason why you can bypass the error.
      3. Client side validation is minimum of 109 x 109 is the size of the image for it to be recognized.

      I would also suggest you to use Open Graph standards on your site because many tools seems to be using it as a key factor to identify images.

      Server side validation remains to be bit unclear. I guess it might be checking if the images are hosted on the same domain might be to avoid hot-linking problem. I believe it could probably be a bug too.

      I have also raised a support ticket addressing this error. Will get back to you once I get a response.

      Cheers!
      Shunmugha

      • Nick says:

        Thanks a lot for the tip Shunmugha about “1. The size of the images play a key role for Pinterest to recognize it.”.

        That was my issue as to why Pinterest wasn’t able to use my 120×60 images and we’ll look at creating some larger ones now, probably just by putting the 120×60 images on a larger background.

  2. Simon says:

    Hi there,
    I agree with Brian, I am definetely looking for a technical solution to force Pinterest to consider an image (that is not present in the page itself, not in hi-res anyway) and can’t find one.

    I have tried og meta tags and it is not supported (yet?) by Pinterest.

    They don’t seem to have a solution to this issue yet, but it will hopefully come soon. I keep searching though ;-)

    • Shunmugha Sundaram says:

      Thanks for your comment Simon. I hope the information I shared for Brian query was useful. The ticket I raised at Pinterest is yet to be resolved! :(

  3. Duane says:

    I have run into the same issue and, sure enough, the bookmarklet does work in my case too.

  4. Krazyglue2 says:

    Plz send me an inv :P !!!

  5. laurie capes says:

    For days and days all I get is a white square with a red X in the corner on all of pinterest, how do I fix this?

    • Shunmugha Sundaram says:

      laurie capes,

      Are you using Bookmarklet to pin the images? Please do share a sample URL so that I can investigate what the problem could be.

    • Lori says:

      I am having the same problem…but since I am computer illiterate…I do not know how to fix this problem. Can you help me??Thank you so much.

      • Shunmugha Sundaram says:

        Lori,

        Would be great if you could give more inputs with respect to the question I asked above. Sample URL? What browser are you using?

  6. kristin says:

    Plz send me an inv XOXOXOXO

  7. Lori says:

    I have been using http://pinterest. This doesn’t seem to make any difference. This problem just started about 4 or 5 days ago.

    • Shunmugha Sundaram says:

      Have you tried pinning the image using Bookmarklet mentioned in the article? Drag and drop the bookmarklet into bookmark menu and then go to the concerned URL and try pinning the images. And by the way what browser are you using?

  8. V says:

    I have been having the same issues. Unable to see pins on https://pinterest.com/
    I am not uploading anything, just browsing. I have a MacBook laptop and I have tried viewing Pinterest from Safari as well as Firefox, to which I use most! Same errors occur on both browsers.
    I have put in a support ticket, but received no real answer to the errors I am getting. I’d LOVE to get back to seeing Pins, otherwise I’m just going to deactivate my Pinterest account.

    Thank you,
    hope you can help!

    • Shunmugha Sundaram says:

      Could you please post a screenshot of the screen ? So that I would get a better idea of what the actual problem could be.

  9. V says:

    There is not an attachment option here. What is my next option

    • Shunmugha Sundaram says:

      You can upload your screenshot to tinypic.com and share the URL of the same here.

      • V says:

        Ok will do.

        Thank you

      • V says:

        Ok here you go, hope this helps.

        [IMG]http://i48.tinypic.com/6z3dbo.jpg[/IMG]

        • Shunmugha Sundaram says:

          Thanks for the screenshot. It’s kind of weird problem. I need few clarifications though.

          1. Are you able to see images properly on other sites?
          2. Have you tried pinterest using Google chrome?
          3. What antivirus/firewall do you use?

          Here are few suggestions to try right away.

          1. Clear the cache entirely. In Firefox press CTRL+SHIFT+DEL. Then select Everything from drop down. Uncheck browsing history and finally press clear now.

          2. I can see in screenshot that address bar shows pinterest.com. Just manually type in https:// in front of pinterest.com and reload the page so that address bar shows as https://pinterest.com/.

          Try these and let me know what happened.

  10. MRS.O says:

    NEED HELP!! No images appear on pinterest. No pins , no boards just profile pics. I can view on Kindle and Android phone but not notebook. I have tried changing browser no help

    • Shunmugha Sundaram says:

      Please reply to below questions in order to help me narrow down the reason behind this sort of an error.

      http://techawakening.org/pinterest-we-couldnt-find-any-images-error/843/#comment-1171

    • annabella67 says:

      Yes same for me – profile pics board and pic data counts but no boards or images??
      What the story – it’s been like this for a week now (though I have regained a few hours in my life as a result :)

  11. V says:

    I haven’t had much time to give an update. So here is my current status. NOTHING HAS CHANGED, lol!! This isn’t even funny, but I’m trying to keep a smile on my face.

    In response to your questions:

    1. Are you able to see images properly on other sites?
    Yes

    2. Have you tried pinterest using Google chrome?
    Yes, still the same issue. This has been gong on since mid June.

    3. What antivirus/firewall do you use?
    ClamAV/My router has a firewall.

    My husband has it to be, after logging in, when I look at the source, I see that the images are pointing to pinimg.com and not pinterest.com. Even my profile pic doesn’t come up:

    https://s-media-cache-ec5.pinimg.com/avatars/1pokiejo-94.jpg

    I’m on a macbook. Not sure if that matters.

    What is causing this issue? I can visit every other site in the world except Pinterest. I don’t have any special blocks or firewalls up that would prevent simple images from displaying. It’s not my browser settings. When I go to Bolt (http://www.bo.lt) a similar site like Pinterest, I see all of the images perfectly.

    I’m not sure if they are routing macs to a different server or what. But with any browser I use, I have the same problems.

    Pinterest support has closed every ticket with “resolved” and never notifying me via email.

    This is getting infuriating and I’m pretty close to writing the company. Theu don’t seem to care about customer service.

    I want answers…

    uughhh

    • Shunmugha Sundaram says:

      Are you able to see the profile pic by directly hitting the URL in the address bar? If not the domain is not reachable that could be the reason.

      - Did you try out the second suggestion I gave using https version typing it manually in address bar?

      - Add https://s-media-cache-ec5.pinimg.com and pinterest.com in firewall exception list and try.

  12. Emily says:

    Hi,
    I use firefox and i’ve been having problems with pinterest page only loading header (can’t see any pins or boards) It’s been like this for a fortnight now. It;s happened before and was fixed by putting https:// in front of address but this fix is not working this time. Tried safari, same problem. I can’t get google chrome cos it’s not supported on my version of Mac. Anyone know how i can fix this?

  13. Emily says:

    I have a screen shot as a .tiff but i cant figure out how to post it here, sorry.

    • Shunmugha Sundaram says:

      Please refer my previous comment:

      http://techawakening.org/pinterest-we-couldnt-find-any-images-error/843/#comment-1136

  14. Jen says:

    Yay! This worked for me, no more annoying message!! Thanks :)

  15. Laurel says:

    I don’t even know how I finished up here, however I assumed this submit was once great. I do not understand who you are however certainly you’re going to a
    famous blogger in case you are not already. Cheers!

    • Shunmugha Sundaram says:

      Laurel,

      Thanks for those words. Makes me feel happy. Readers like you play a key role in it. Hope your words come true! :D

  16. Histerius says:

    Very useful article, thank you for clarification of Pinterest’ behavior. Gonna tweet this article :-)

  17. Sam says:

    Check out this Chrome extension that I built.

    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pin-it-all/fgkahiidpmgafgcfiodnkecmecddgldk

    It lets you pin sites regardless of pinterest’s image/video requirements. It lets you pin an image of a cat instead.

    I built it because I was trying to use Pinterest for bookmarking sites but not all of them had a sufficient image on the page.

  18. Ali says:

    Hi – I have a question about pinning Pinterest images. When I’m at this site http://catalog.winecountryparty.com/online/Ordering_DepartmentNewMenu.aspx?Catalog=yes and I want to pin an image from their catalog (using the bookmarklet), it only comes up with their logo. Why is that?

  19. Mike says:

    Hello!

    Hopefully you can help me with a similar issue I have been having in the past week. The bookmarklet (the one from Pinterest’s site as well as the one posted above) won’t find anything but the header image on my website (www.forgedphotography.com). It has worked in the past but it stopped working sometime late last week. It is a wordpress blog and I deactivated all of the plugins and switched to a factory theme but the problem still persists.

    If I click on an individual image I can pin from there, but I am no longer able to pin from my blog’s homepage which will be frustrating if people want to pin the images that I have posted.

    I appreciate your willingness to help!

    In gratitude,

    Mike

    • Mike,

      I noticed that you are directly embedding the images from Facebook. I believe Pinterest will not recognize pics that directly resides in Facebook. Was it working before?

      Try uploading the pictures onto your server and then insert it into the post then try pining it.

  20. S.E. says:

    Well, I’m not getting it. I used to be able to pin any photo from my website, but now only a couple of photos are pinnable (out of hundreds). I tried making a few pictures larger (though most of them are at least 120×320). I tried different browsers. I readded the pinup button on my toolbar.

    Maybe this started when I switched from a personal account to a business account? Is it possible you are not allowed to pin from your own site?

    Further, I get ZERO traffic on my Pinterest boards (haven’t had any repins for 6 weeks), nor do I or any of my pins show up in a search.

    So, I am about to give up on it. Maybe I’m just not doing something right?

  21. Betty Muse says:

    My red “Follow” button no longer shows on any of my boards…how do I fix this problem?…please send an answer by e-mail…thanks!!

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