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.

 

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