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You are here: Home / Google / Animated GIFs in Google Search Results

Animated GIFs in Google Search Results

May 5, 2015 at 6:34 am PST By Jennifer Slegg

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google animated gifsThis is something I never thought I would see…. Google seems to be testing / allowing animated GIFs to be displayed in the search results after I noticed this eye catching example in the search results today.  [Apologies for what I am sure is a horribly large image size due to the animation.]  Click through to see full-sized version.

home depot animated plus newSee how your eye is instantly drawn to that image in the knowledge graph part of the search results?  The animation actually is a bit faster on the search results page, but I was limited on trying to catch it all while screen capturing the entire page of search results above the fold.

The animated GIF is displayed for the most recent post Google+ post made by a company with a knowledge graph in the search results.  Search for the company or brand name and your eye is instantly drawn to the animated GIF in the lower right… especially since everyone is so used to there never being anything that moves in those search results.

What seems to be prompting this animation, since plenty of people post animated GIFs to Google+ and they never seemed to have ended up on the search results page, is that Google seems to be creating the animated GIF based off the video, and somehow it is ending up displayed as an animated thumbnail into the search knowledge graph.

When you click on the image, it takes you to Home Depot’s Google+ page, which has a hybrid of an animated GIF with the video play arrow on it.  When you click the image from this post on their Google+ page, it clicks through to a video.

A pretty interesting change…. and I am sure like we saw in the case of the emojis in the Google search results titles, we will see this quickly used and abused, as it is extremely eye catching.

I will honestly be shocked if this change stays, because of the potential for it to be abused.  But definitely eye catching, I am sure the CTR on that was phenomenal.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.
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Latest posts by Jennifer Slegg (see all)

  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update - October 19, 2021
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  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met - October 16, 2020
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters - October 6, 2020
  • Analyzing “How Google Search Works” Changes from Google - July 8, 2020

Filed Under: Google, SEO

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Comments

  1. Tyson Stevens says

    May 5, 2015 at 2:21 pm

    Interesting that we can’t add emojis to entice the eye, but Google can add GIFs to entice the eye for one of their products.

Trackbacks

  1. SearchCap: Mobile Searches Rank, No Google Update & AdWords Announcement says:
    May 5, 2015 at 2:00 pm

    […] Animated GIFs in Google Search Results, The SEM Post […]

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