Animated GIFs in Google Products

[bfrazier]

Hello! I'm reaching out regarding the products section in GBP. Specifically, my team and I are uploading animated GIFs in the "Products" section. It looks great! However, the products are only showing properly on desktop. When we look at mobile, it's a static background image without the text. Anyone have a similar experience or guidance on how to get the GIF to show on mobile or if this is even possible? Thank you in advance!

 

[JoyHawkins]

I just checked one of mine and they work fine for me on mobile (in Chrome). What device + browser are you using?

 

[bfrazier]

I just checked one of mine and they work fine for me on mobile (in Chrome). What device + browser are you using?

Hi Joy! My apologies for my delayed reply! We've looked on desktop using Chrome (where it works great), but when we look on mobile (both Andriod and iPhone), it's a static image.

 

[JoyHawkins]

I used Chrome on my android and can see the GIF just fine. Maybe it's just a specific listing that has an issue. What's the name + address of the listing you're looking at?

 

[bfrazier]

I used Chrome on my android and can see the GIF just fine. Maybe it's just a specific listing that has an issue. What's the name + address of the listing you're looking at?

We were testing it on our company GBP before implementing it for any of our clients. It looked so bad we switched it back to a static image. I'll ask my teammate to add the .gif back to one of images so you can see it. I'll circle back here when its done!

 

[bfrazier]

@JoyHawkins we have 1 product image in our GBP with the GIF. It's titled "Influencer Marketing." Showing great on desktop and mobile great right now, but previously, it went to a blank static image after a few days on mobile. We're gonna keep an eye on it to see what happens in the next few days. Thank you for your help here, Joy. Very much appreciated!

 

[JoyHawkins]

Okay so I was able to replicate what you're seeing with this one, however, I'm not seeing this happen with the ones we've done (I checked one of our clients). I'm guessing the formatting we're using might be different than what you're using.

I asked my team what they do and this is what they replied with:

The dimensions are 940x788 they get downloaded from Canva as a GIF then on the computer you do an extension replacement where you swap .gif for .jpg this prompts a warning on your computer that you are making the image unstable, ignore the message and upload to GBP


Are you using .jpg?

 

[bfrazier]

Okay so I was able to replicate what you're seeing with this one, however, I'm not seeing this happen with the ones we've done (I checked one of our clients). I'm guessing the formatting we're using might be different than what you're using.

I asked my team what they do and this is what they replied with:

The dimensions are 940x788 they get downloaded from Canva as a GIF then on the computer you do an extension replacement where you swap .gif for .jpg this prompts a warning on your computer that you are making the image unstable, ignore the message and upload to GBP


Are you using .jpg?

Yup... that's EXACTLY what we're doing. Except for the dimensions... I'm gonna double check that. That could very well be the issue. I think ours are 1200x900. I'll find out and circle back!

 

[bfrazier]

@JoyHawkins Update! So, we ran a little internal test to see what various folks were seeing on mobile. For most everyone (whether they're using iPhone or Android), it was static only when they clicked through on the image from the products page. On the products page itself, the image is beautifully animated. Oh how I wish we could pinpoint the issue, because when it works, the image looks sooo good! There are discussions that maybe it's a certain version of Safari or a certain version of Chrome that could be to blame. One suggested solution is to make the first frame of the animated image also be the last frame with the fully loaded text. We might try that with a client that has way less products than we do!