Are Animated Google+ Profile Pictures Acceptable For Authorship?

Apr 2, 2013 - 8:50 am 15 by

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:

Animated Google+ Profile Pictures

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.

Forum discussion at Google+.

This story was scheduled to be posted today and was not written today.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google

Google Sued SerpApi Over Scraping Search Results

Dec 19, 2025 - 3:50 pm
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 19, 2025

Dec 19, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Core Update Status, Gemini 3 Flash In AI Mode, Optimizing For AI Search & Bug Fixes Galore

Dec 19, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google

Google Product Reviews Bug On Product Detail Pages

Dec 19, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google

Google Search Testing New Sports Features

Dec 19, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Tests Video Assets From Merchant Center

Dec 19, 2025 - 7:31 am
 
Previous Story: Most SEOs Feel Google Gives Brands Preferential Treatment