Because often the image that was indexed was in the related/other area of the page and is not on the page when you click on the link. Ever since Google removed the direct link to image feature from the search results page anything from pinterest.com is basically SEO spam.

> Because often the image that was indexed was in the related/other area of the page and is not on the page when you click on the link.

Every time I've been affected I could find the image in a couple of seconds of scrolling

> Ever since Google removed the direct link to image feature from the search results page

It's easy to add it back. Most of the people here (me included) use ad blockers, downloaders and stuff like probably violating the Google user agreement, they should not have any problem installing a small userscript/extension to forget about this problem as well.

Because instead of a direct link to the creator's accout you get this copy pasta and this bs: https://imgur.com/a/uhrFVvp

They don’t show that pop up anymore in the majority of countries when you come over from a google link.

Well, they show it here in Russia, but even then - you are still landing on a pinterest page instead of the original (say instagram or pixiv, or whatever).

And for the majority of people - this will be the final destination..

Without Pinterest in the image results, you might have instead found that same image on the creators page.