GIF in products

[GBP-Rob]

For those of you that uses GIFs in the products section - have they stopped working for you?

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Hi Rob, are the images no longer displaying or does something else show up in its place? Does it occur on desktop and/or mobile, or is it a particular browser and/or device?

 

[Rosa]

Hi, I'm having the same issue with our GIFs used in the products section. It just shows black on Google and mobile devices as well. They look and work fine in the dashboard.

 

[morganbloom]

Yes!! They stopped working for us too. We have a picture with text that shows up (as the gif) and all it's showing is the background picture - no movement.

Not working on desktop & mobile.

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Are these animated GIFs? There is a very similar thread currently: Animated GIFs in Google Products

 

[Professor M]

I don't want a party crasher and I see many people using GIFs, but Google advises on Maps user-generated content policy that GIFs are not permitted, and there is a link to that page from a GBP support page.
https://support.google.com/business/answer/7667250?hl=en&ref_topic=4540086

Even though you can upload GIFs, could Google penalize users?

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

I don't want a party crasher and I see many people using GIFs, but Google advises on Maps user-generated content policy that GIFs are not permitted, and there is a link to that page from a GBP support page.
https://support.google.com/business/answer/7667250?hl=en&ref_topic=4540086

Even though you can upload GIFs, could Google penalize users?

I share @Professor M suspicions. Even though Google's accepted image types for Products include GIFs, I always thought that animated GIFs were always kind of a gray area. I'm also wondering if Google is cracking down on GIFs as being potentially too spammy, or if certain elements of individual GIFs may trigger blocking by Google. It seems very, very similar to Google's blocking of certain Posts they consider to be spammy which @Colan Nielsen has posted about recently: Google Now Considers Google Posts With "Duplicate photos, posts, videos, and logos" To be Spam If you take a look at his post, Google is really cracking down on images. Would really like to hear Colan's take on this!

 

[Orlando Sydney]

I share @Professor M suspicions. Even though Google's accepted image types for Products include GIFs, I always thought that animated GIFs were always kind of a gray area. I'm also wondering if Google is cracking down on GIFs as being potentially too spammy, or if certain elements of individual GIFs may trigger blocking by Google. It seems very, very similar to Google's blocking of certain Posts they consider to be spammy which @Colan Nielsen has posted about recently: Google Now Considers Google Posts With "Duplicate photos, posts, videos, and logos" To be Spam If you take a look at his post, Google is really cracking down on images. Would really like to hear Colan's take on this!

Good point. I've been considering adding them but hesitant at the same time. It would be helpful if they clarified before owners invested in new gif images or worse, had all their product listings hidden.