Pintrest may be dismissed by some simply as the latest place for recipes or craft project ideas, but now some new statistics indicate it’s quickly gaining some real traction on the web.

If social media is part of your marketing game plan, then you’re going to need to pay attention, because Pinterest is rocketing up the charts.

While the virtual pinning board is still far behind Facebook in the amount of referral traffic it generates, Pinterest came out ahead of more established sites like LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+, in January according to a report by Shareaholic.

They took a look at over 200,000 publishers, who reach over 260 million people, and Pinterest’s referral traffic numbers were right up there with all the heavy hitters.

And more importantly, it’s Pintrest saw it’s piece of the referral traffic pie get bigger, while the majority of social media websites saw declines, although most were slight.

Pinterest garnered 3.6% of referral traffic last month, a 1.1 percent increase, the largest such gain among all of the sites Shareaholic tracked. Only the aforementioned leader Facebook showed a gain anywhere close to that, just under a percent.

If you’re a brand with a heavy social media presence, those are numbers that are impossible to ignore. Especially when you consider that last July Pinterest accounted for only .17% of the internet’s referral traffic, according to Mashable.

Some other interesting points worth noting:

Oh MySpace. Where Have You Gone?

Bringing up the rear is the darling of social media past. MySpace. In both December and January referred a mere .1 percent.  Been nice knowing ya.

StumbleUpon Did Stumble, But It Didn’t Fall

While the bookmarking site lost a hefty chunk of it’s referral traffic in January, it wasn’t enough to make it fall out of the #2 spot. While it may not be getting the buzz like Pinterest, StumbleUpon still generated 5.07 percent of referral traffic in January, well ahead of similar site Reddit, the only other bookmarking site to make Shareaholic’s list.

Google Minus?

Even though Google is further integrating its Google+ service into the rest of it’s products, Google+ saw a slight decline in referral traffic, as did Google overall. Google+ still has a long way to go, referring only .22 percent in January, a .02 drop. All of Google’s services also saw a small decline, from 3.69 to 3.62.

Back to Pinterest

Carefully curated or carefree, pinning is getting interesting. Let Tropic Survival know if you are looking for a branding strategy that includes Pinterest.