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Google announced on Google+ twice that you can now use an animated GIF for your profile photo.
What does that mean? Well, here is Google's Matt Steiner with an animated profile photo, as an animated GIF:
Cute? Yes. Geeky? Oh yeah! But I have a concern.
Google has told us that our authorship headshot has to be of some quality. We know that Google uses the Google+ profile photo in many cases as the authorship photo. We also know that most of us would not consider animated GIFs acceptable quality for a writer's headshot.
Would an animated GIF work for authorship in Google's search results snippets? If so, would Google only show one frame or let them be animated in the search results?
If I had to guess? Google will not use animated GIFs as authorship thumbnails in the search results.
I personally will not be testing this.
This story was scheduled to be posted today and was not written today.
Comments:
Josh
04/02/2013 01:27 pm
So distracting and prone to abuse.
Sean Murray
04/02/2013 01:27 pm
An animated profile photo is kind of lame
Alberto Esteban Carranza
04/02/2013 03:30 pm
no, it will not work. Google will take just the first frame of the slide. See http://www.google.com/#site=&source=hp&q=Matt+Steiner&oq=Matt+Steiner&gs_l=hp.3..0i19l7j0i10i19j0i19l2.340.340.0.588.1.1.0.0.0.0.17.17.1.1.0...0.0...1c.1.8.hp.op7wL9dG1lg&bav=on.2,or.&bvm=bv.44697112,d.Yms&fp=94c715b5794df21e&biw=1920&bih=955
Ian Williams
04/02/2013 03:36 pm
It all seems very...Myspace
Techhapa
04/02/2013 04:46 pm
Your GIF is lame.
Oleg Korneitchouk
04/02/2013 07:41 pm
Mystery solved!
DavidCrowell
04/02/2013 08:40 pm
I say let people have gifs then we know who is professional about what they are doing
Sunny Ujjawal
04/03/2013 04:41 am
Yes, In case of Matt Steiner Animated Google+ Profile Pictures Acceptable For Authorship but not a gif....
Daniel (Butz) Sherf
04/03/2013 06:24 am
Back to kindergarten
David
04/03/2013 07:06 am
Looks unappealing and not professional at all, when taking authorship markup into consideration.Being an author means that you are an authority on the subject/topics that you cover and using animated gifs, will well just make you look like you are not taking what you cover seriously.April fools day all day long...
Jawad Latif
04/03/2013 08:07 am
Doesn't look cool at all
Resep masakan
04/03/2013 09:43 am
even the picture is being moved by a cyclone, the object in that photo is still ugly. Lol :))
Soni Sharma
04/03/2013 10:14 am
really distracting... I don't like it.
Khalid Irfan
04/03/2013 10:53 am
static is better.
Barry Schwartz
04/08/2013 02:08 pm
I am surprised Google allows it at all.