Diwali photos at the jewellery shop mirror: a three-month-old Indian prompt site, and how it got into the global top 120k via Google search
What it is A free Indian AI photo prompt site: copy a prompt, upload a selfie to ChatGPT or Gemini, and get a festival, couple, or boy/girl style portrait. The site makes money from Google ads.
Why it took off A run of Indian festivals from 8 to November, and everyone is making AI festival portraits. It publishes pages daily around the festival calendar and trending topics, and got into Google's top three for several popular long-tail queries.
CHow you could play it Don't compete head-on in India, where it's already crowded. Take the playbook (festival calendar + hit prompts + SEO pages with example images) to Indonesia, Vietnam, or the Middle East, to languages and festivals nobody is serving yet, and launch 2–4 weeks before the next big holiday.
Global rank 117k · 90 days ago, top 1M+
Built in July 2026, promptpin.in does something simple: it collects prompts for "upload a selfie and turn it into a festival portrait in ChatGPT or Gemini with one click" and lets people copy them for free. India has festival after festival, and in 3 weeks the site climbed in global rankings from 850k to 117k. The approach is cheap and fast to pay off, but in India it's already the fourth or fifth entrant. The real question is whether the same thing works for festivals and languages nobody has covered yet.
The page that went live on Dhanteras
11 月 6 日是 Dhanteras,印度人在这天买金子,是排灯节(Diwali,11-08)前的第一个大日子。当天印度时间下午 2 点多,promptpin.in 上线了一页新内容:「Dhanteras 金饰购物 AI 写真提示词(女生)」。页面上一张效果图,下面一段可以直接复制的英文提示词,大意是:
Keep the face and skin texture from the uploaded photo. Generate a Dhanteras portrait: the person in a gold shop mirror, wearing a gold necklace, holding a bangle close to the light. The reflection should be clear, with warm bulb light, blurred glints from gold display cases, dark elegant clothes, and a quiet, satisfied smile.
Further down are five usage steps (copy → open ChatGPT → upload photo → paste → regenerate if you don't like it), "good for posting on Instagram, profile pictures, and WhatsApp DPs," plus paragraphs of boilerplate text that appear on every page. The five pinned on the homepage are all Diwali and Dhanteras: rooftop firework couple photos, pink lehenga with sparklers, and a boy holding an oil lamp over a rangoli.
That's the whole product. No sign-up, no payment, no tool. Users copy and leave, then go make the image in Gemini or ChatGPT.
How fast it grew
- Global ranking (Tranco, 30-day rolling): 10-15 first entered the top 1M, at #852k; 10-22 #254k; 10-29 #155k; 11-05 #117k. It climbs every week, and there's no sign of a ceiling yet.
- Chrome real-user tiers: India was in the top 1M tier in July, top 500k in August, and jumped straight to the top 5k in September. Globally it reached the top 50k in September. France, Indonesia, Italy, the Philippines and others also reached the top 500k, likely Indians living abroad.
- Site age: the publish date on the homepage is 2026-07-22, so it's about three and a half months old.
This ranking is a 30-day average, which lags real traffic by one or two weeks. So the real peak is likely late October, from Navratri to Diwali on Nov 8 (inference). There are no absolute traffic numbers and no revenue figures.
Where users come from: almost entirely Google
In Indian Google results (approximate queries, not webmaster-console data), it holds several strong positions: "couple ai photo prompt gemini" at #1, "navratri ai photo prompt" at #1, "ai photo prompts for boys" at #2, and "diwali ai photo prompt" at #3.
You can see its approach:
- Two-layer page structure: collection pages (Diwali, couples, boys, girls, Raksha Bandhan, Ganesh Chaturthi, Navratri, 1980s retro, ...) with hundreds of single-prompt pages underneath, each with one example image. Titles follow the search-engine-first pattern "550+ Free (2026)" or "Copy & Paste — Free 2026", and it runs an SEO plugin like Rank Math.
- Publishing to the calendar and trends: collection pages go up ahead of festivals, and single pages are added on the day. It also chases movie releases, e.g. "Jailer 2 cinema couple photo prompt on release day (2026-10-15)."
- Picks up a second type of search on the side: VN and CapCut editing template codes, using trending Hindi songs ("Jogiyo Ke Piche … VN Code Template"), aimed at people making Instagram Reels.
On social media it has Instagram (342 followers, 19 posts, using "comment PROMPT to get the prompts" to drive traffic), Pinterest, a WhatsApp channel and Telegram, all with small numbers. I couldn't find it on X, Reddit or in media coverage, and I saw no paid ads.
Where the money comes from
Only ads. The pages have several Google AdSense slots, and each page has several links to its Android app "Prompt Pin: AI Photo Prompts," which also carries ads. Google Play shows 5K+ downloads (11-06), which is far smaller than the website's reach. The traffic is on the web, not in the app.
No memberships and no pricing page. AdSense CPMs in India are very low, and real revenue can't be seen from outside. What is clear is that costs are also low: one WordPress site, one person, images and pages produced daily.
Who it's competing with: crowded, and they got there first
After the Gemini "Nano Banana" portrait craze in 2025, individual Indian webmasters rushed to build this kind of site. 11-05's global ranking:
| Site | Global rank (11-05) | India real-user tier (September) | When they came up |
|---|---|---|---|
| promptseen.com | 10k | Top 1 thousand | On the chart by late July, companion app 775k installs |
| auraprompt.in / editingprompt.com / meraprompt.com | 9.2–93k | Top 5 thousand | By late July |
| promptpin.in | 117k | Top 5k | Charted by 10-15 |
| picsandprompts / promptkaro / promptkhajana / sushilprompt and others | 20–250k | #10k down to #50k | Mid-year, several are sliding |
| aiprompts.buzz, promptcreen.com | 25–260k | #10k down to #50k | Charted in mid-October |
The app side is more crowded: Prompt Gallery 417k installs, Tik Prompt 157k, Prompt Saar (listed late September) 76k. Big sites are also going after the same terms: media.io, Filmora and LightX all have "Diwali AI prompt" pages, and NDTV and Gadgets Now have published festival prompt roundups.
PromptPin is functionally no different from these sites. It reached the front ranks through execution: longer and more detailed prompts (face lock, scene, lighting, and quality written as separate sections), image prompts and editing templates on one site, and frequent updates. Even the name "promptpin" is already being searched for. faymas.io made a page called "Looking for PromptPin prompts? We're a different free library" to capture its brand terms.
What happens next
Three risks are on the table:
- It drops once the festival ends. From after Diwali until mid-January there's no comparable festival in India, so rankings will likely start falling in mid-to-late November (inference).
- Google doesn't like thin content at scale. Each page's boilerplate text is nearly the same template. A core update aimed at mass-produced content could wipe out rankings overnight.
- Upstream can eat the middle layer. If Gemini or ChatGPT adds a "festival style" button inside the product, the need for these sites disappears.
If it were you
One-line verdict: entering India now is late. The leader there is an order of magnitude bigger and got going months earlier. What's worth taking is the playbook (festival calendar + hit prompts + SEO pages), tested in a market nobody is serving yet.
Who it suits: a solo builder who knows WordPress SEO and can publish steadily every day, ideally fluent in a smaller language and the local festivals and pop culture (Indonesian, Vietnamese, Arabic, Portuguese), and who accepts this is a low-ticket ad business.
Who it doesn't suit: anyone who wants subscription revenue or a real moat, anyone who only codes and won't produce images and pages every day, and anyone who wants to fight head-on in the Indian English/Hindi market.
How to do it: a WordPress site with two layers: festival/audience collection pages plus single-prompt pages, each with an example image you generated yourself in Gemini or ChatGPT. Write prompts in the same sectioned order: face lock → scene → lighting → lens → texture. Don't use the same boilerplate on every page. Write something that is actually different for each prompt, leaving room for Google updates. The app can come later; build the web side first.
How to get users: Google organic search. Follow the local festival calendar: put collection pages up 2–4 weeks before each festival and add single pages on the day. Watch which portrait styles are trending locally on TikTok and Instagram, and publish the same day. Social accounts are only a supplement.
When to launch: depends on the market you pick. For Indonesia and the Middle East, Eid and Ramadan (2027 falls around 2–March), so launch before late December and start Ramadan content in January. Vietnam's Lunar New Year is in early February of 2027; if you miss it, wait for the next holiday.
Signs you've misread it: (1) In your chosen market, searching "festival name + AI photo prompt" in the local language turns up a row of similar sites on the first three pages, meaning it's crowded there too. (2) Two months after launch, through one festival cycle, pages are indexed but no keyword reaches the top 10. (3) Gemini or ChatGPT adds a festival-style template in the product. (4) promptpin.in and its peers fall back beyond #500k a month after Diwali and don't recover for the next holiday, which would mean the business only exists during those few festival days.
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Data and sources: global ranking from Tranco (as of 11-05); real-user tiers from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX, as of 2026-09); Google rankings are approximate queries via a search API, run for India in early November; page content and publish dates from the promptpin.in site (11-06); app download counts from Google Play (11-06); competitor app install counts from Google Play.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one PromptSeen (promptseen.com + Prompt Seen App) Web Before 2026-05 (app listed on 2026-05-29) Tranco 10,163; CrUX India top 1k; app 775k installs, 25k rating The leader of the same model, several months earlier and an order of magnitude bigger. PromptPin came in later as a follower. auraprompt.in / editingprompt.com / meraprompt.com Web On the Tranco chart before 2026-07-30 Tranco 9.2–93k; CrUX India top 5k Almost identical content and categories, similar scale to PromptPin and earlier. PromptPin added VN/CapCut templates and updates more often. promptkaro / sushilprompt / promptkhajana / picsandprompts / promptwale and others Web Mid-2026 Tranco 21–490k; CrUX India top 10k to top 50k, with several sliding Same-type personal sites: PromptPin beat them with update frequency and SEO structure Prompt Gallery / Tik Prompt / Prompt Saar and other apps Android 2024-12 to 2026-09 76k to 417k installs Goes app-first; PromptPin's app has only 5K+ installs, its main battlefield is web SEO media.io / Filmora / LightX / SeaArt festival prompt pages Other Ongoing SEO pages from big sites Big companies use prompt pages to funnel users into their own editors; PromptPin only does prompts and sends people straight to free Gemini/ChatGPT Gemini / ChatGPT themselves Big-company features Nano Banana 2025 Huge They are the tools that actually generate images; PromptPin is just a middle layer on top of them. If they ever ship built-in style templates, this layer gets eaten - Where users come from
- Verified Google organic search (SEO): Jina (India) search results: couple ai photo prompt gemini #1, navratri ai photo prompt #1, ai photo prompts for boys #2, diwali ai photo prompt #3; the site runs Rank Math + Site Kit
- Verified Festival / trend batch page generation: Diwali/Navratri/Raksha Bandhan/Ganesh/Dhanteras collections, a Jailer 2 release-day page, trending song VN/CapCut template pages; dateModified 2026-11-06
- Verified Instagram / Pinterest / Facebook: IG has 342 followers and 19 posts, driving traffic with "Comment PROMPT"; Pinterest has 126 Pins; a personal Facebook profile posts promo videos
- Inferred Paid ads / media / X / Reddit: ad library is empty, x-radar has 0 posts, no media coverage
promptpin.in: an SEO site for "AI photo prompts" during India's festival season
One-liner: promptpin.in is a WordPress site 2026-07 built, with 550+ copy-paste ChatGPT / Gemini (Nano Banana) prompts for "upload a selfie, get a photo shoot", sorted into men / women / couples / festivals, plus VN and CapCut template codes. It's free, no signup, and it makes money from AdSense and an ad-supported Android app (5K+ installs). Verdict: it's working because three things came together: Google search + the Indian festival season (Raksha Bandhan → Ganesh Chaturthi → Navratri → Dhanteras/Diwali) + batch-publishing pages around trends. The product has no real moat. There are at least a dozen similar sites, and most of them are older and bigger. Its edge is aggressive SEO and fast updates, which got it Google rankings #1–3 on a few festival and couples long-tail keywords. It isn't relying on social or paid ads.
1. Data (our traffic library)
- Tranco: 2026-10-15 first entered the top 1M (852,207) → 10-22 254,464 → 10-29 155,477 → 11-05 116,744, still climbing daily, no peak yet (traffic.rank_day). Tranco is a 30-day rolling average, lagging real traffic by 1–2 weeks, so the real peak should fall from late October into early November (Navratri mid-October, Dhanteras 11-06, Diwali 11-08).
- CrUX India: 2026-07 top 1M → 08 top 500k → 09 top 5 thousand; 09 top 50k globally. France, Indonesia, Italy, the Netherlands, and the Philippines 09 entered the top 500k; Canada, Germany, the UK, and Japan entered the top 1M. Traffic is almost entirely from India, with the rest probably overseas Indians and scattered long-tail searches (traffic.crux_domain).
- Homepage published 2026-07-22, About page 2026-07-20 → a new site, roughly 3.5 months old (Jina scraped the site metadata).
- Traffic is mainly web, not app: the Play listing "Prompt Pin : AI Photo Prompts" (com.promptpin.ai, developer Shubhaspvt, contains ads) has only 5K+ downloads (Play page, 2026-11-06), several orders of magnitude below the CrUX India top 5 thousand level. Our googleplay library does not index this app.
2. Competitors: crowded, and they're all older
Sites in the traffic library with "prompt" in the domain doing the same thing, "India AI photo prompts" (Tranco 2026-11-05 rank / CrUX India 2026-09 tier / first entered Tranco top 1M):
| Site | Tranco 11-05 | CrUX India 09 | Start |
|---|---|---|---|
| promptseen.com (companion app Prompt Seen 775k installs, 25k ratings, on Play 2026-05-29) | 10,163 | Top 1 thousand (has been since 05–09) | On the list before 07-30 |
| auraprompt.in | 92,098 | Top 5 thousand | Before 07-30 |
| editingprompt.com | 92,584 | Top 5 thousand | Before 07-30 |
| meraprompt.com | 93,394 | Top 5 thousand | Before 07-30 |
| promptpin.in | 116,744 | Top 5k | 10-15 |
| promptplum.com | 199,007 | — | Before 07-30 |
| picsandprompts.com | 216,492 | Top 10k | 09-03 |
| promptkaro.com | 216,653 | Top 50k (fell from 05's top 5 thousand) | Before 07-30 |
| promptkhajana.in | 249,358 | Top 50k | 08-13 |
| sushilprompt.com | 249,687 | Top 50k | Before 07-30 |
| aiprompts.buzz | 257,089 | Top 50k | 10-16 |
| promptcreen.com | 263,853 | Top 10k | 10-19 |
| promptwale.com / promptdekho.com / promptseenn.com / bananaprompts.xyz | Around 480k (declining) | Top 50k | — |
- App side (googleplay library): Prompt Seen 775k, Prompt Gallery (AppBees) 417k, Tik Prompt 157k, Pixsnap 108k, Prompt Saar (listed 2026-09-30) 76k, PromptSher 22k… PromptPin's app has 5K+, ranked last.
- Big companies and large content sites: media.io, Filmora, LightX, SeaArt, and Edimakor all run SEO pages for "Diwali / Navratri / Dhanteras AI prompt"; NDTV, Gadgets Now, and Free Press Journal have published festival prompt roundups (Jina search results). Gemini and ChatGPT are themselves image tools; prompt sites are just the middle layer funneling users to them.
- Name clash: promptpin.pro is a different site, aimed at Pakistan / Bing Image Creator (things like truck-art avatars), and its content 2026-11 is still being updated. The "PromptPin" from PinMyPrompt / nhrsoft is a Chrome tool for managing prompts, and has nothing to do with this site.
- Brand-term copycats have already arrived: faymas.io built a dedicated "PromptPin Prompts" landing page reading "Searching for PromptPin prompts? Faymas is a separate, free prompt library", apparently capturing its brand searches (faymas.io/g/promptpin-prompts). So people are already searching the term "promptpin".
Summary: after Gemini's Nano Banana portrait trend 2025 year, this niche got packed with individual Indian site operators. PromptPin came later, and its scale is roughly ranked #4–5. It got in because it updates fast and does on-page SEO well, not because it was first or different.
3. Where users come from
| Channel | Evidence | Confirmed? |
|---|---|---|
| Google organic search (main channel) | Jina (Google-style) India results: "couple ai photo prompt gemini" #1, "navratri ai photo prompt" #1, "ai photo prompts for boys" #2, "diwali ai photo prompt" #3; pages run Rank Math SEO and Google Site Kit; titles follow SEO patterns like "… — 550+ Free (2026)" and "Copy & Paste — Free 2026" | Confirmed |
| Batch page generation by trend / festival | Navigation features Diwali, Navratri, Raksha Bandhan, Ganesh Chaturthi, and Dhanteras collections; there are also movie-release pages, such as "Jailer 2 release-day cinema hall AI photo prompt for couple (15 October 2026)"; the homepage is topped with Diwali / Dhanteras content; couple page dateModified 2026-11-06 | Confirmed |
| Template-code long tail (VN Code / CapCut) | Pages like "Jogiyo Ke Piche … VN Code Template" and "Guru Randhawa Song CapCut Template" tie into trending songs, targeting searches from the Instagram Reels editing crowd | Confirmed (how much traffic they bring is unverified) |
| Instagram / Pinterest / Facebook | IG @promptpin.in has only 342 followers and 19 posts, driving traffic with "Comment PROMPT" and "For prompt visit Promptpin"; Pinterest promptpinofficial has 126 Pins; a personal Facebook profile posts videos promoting promptpin.in (pritamnandi.999, relationship to the operator unverified) | Yes, but small volume, not the main channel |
| X / Reddit / HN / press | x-radar: 90 posts over 0 days; nothing on Reddit or TrustMRR | None |
| Paid ads | Card ads empty; no paid campaigns seen | No evidence |
Monetization: the page has 8 adsbygoogle placements, AdSense account ca-pub-5700322119084978; each page carries 6 Play links pushing users to the app, which also contains ads. No paywall, no pricing page.
4. Why it took off
- Demand is ready-made and bursts by season: Indian users run selfies through Gemini / ChatGPT to make festival portraits, a mainstream habit, and major media keep publishing festival prompt roundups. 8–November festivals come one after another, so search demand climbs in waves. PromptPin's Tranco rise (from 10-15) and its CrUX tier jump (into the top 09 thousand, 5) line up with the stretch from Ganesh Chaturthi → Navratri → Diwali.
- SEO is done well: WordPress + Rank Math, a two-level structure of category/collection pages plus single prompt pages, each with an "exact result" preview and "Works best with: ChatGPT", titles stuffed with "Free / Copy & Paste / 2026 / count". It ranks Google #1–3 on several high-frequency long-tail terms.
- Fast on trends: movie releases, trending songs, and Dhanteras all had matching pages the same day. The prompts are long and detailed (they demand "keep the original face") and usable as-is, so dwell time and return visits are a bit better.
- No sign-up, fully free: users just copy and paste into Gemini, and the operator earns from AdSense per impression, with no conflict against what users want.
5. Differentiation
Compared with promptseen, auraprompt, and meraprompt, PromptPin has no functional difference: all offer free copy-paste prompts, all sort by men / women / couples / festivals, and all have an Android app. The only differences are in execution: (a) longer, more "engineered" prompts (face-locking, composition, quality staged out); (b) VN / CapCut template codes and image prompts in one site, catching two search types; (c) very dense updates, with a page for every festival and trend. These are why it pushed into the front ranks, but anyone can copy them. No moat.
6. How visible it is, and copycats
- Visibility: still little known (to outsiders). No media coverage, 0 posts on X / Reddit, no public revenue. But the niche itself is already a red ocean in India's site-operator circles.
- Copycats: faymas.io is capturing the "PromptPin" brand term; the same-name promptpin.pro is also operating (whether it copied this one is unverified); other new Tranco entrants in the same period include aiprompts.buzz (10-16), promptcreen.com (10-19), and prompt-cue.com (10-11).
7. What to borrow
- Turning fleeting viral prompts from social platforms into searchable SEO pages with previews is cheap and works fast: 3 months from 0 to CrUX India top 5 thousand.
- Pre-publish content on the local holiday calendar: put each holiday's collection page up 2–4 weeks early so you catch the full seasonal search peak.
- It can be moved to other markets: Indonesia (Eid al-Fitr), Vietnam (Tết), Arabic-speaking countries (Ramadan), Brazil (Carnival). The "holiday + AI portrait" demand there may have less competition than India, but this is unverified.
- Risks: Google core updates hit "thin / mass-produced content"; Gemini and ChatGPT's built-in templates or "style libraries" can eat this middle layer; after the holiday, traffic can drop off a cliff.
8. Uncertain
- Real traffic and revenue (AdSense RPM is very low in India) are unknown. The operator is likely an individual developer in India (Play developer Shubhaspvt, email [email protected]); identity unverified.
- How much traffic survives after Diwali (11-08): Tranco is still rising because of lag; expect a decline starting in mid-to-late November.
- Google rankings are approximated with Jina search, not GSC data, so the actual SERP in India may differ.
Sources: traffic database rank_day / crux_domain (checked 2026-11-07); googleplay database app_profile; promptpin.in homepage / About / couple collection page (Jina Reader, including HTML source); Play page com.promptpin.ai; instagram.com/promptpin.in; in.pinterest.com/promptpinofficial; faymas.io/g/promptpin-prompts; promptpin.pro; Jina search (gl=in) for several keywords; x-radar search for "promptpin".