How Much Thought Do You Give to Your Online Avatar?

Filed in SEO, Social Media by Matt McGee on December 12, 2012

Here are a couple articles worth reading:

Mike Blumenthal invited me, AJ Kohn and Cyrus Shepard to do a small, unscientific study of a handful of online avatars — photos of attorneys, actually — that are showing up in Google’s search results due to their use of Google’s authorship markup.

Our three “expert” opinions of which avatar is best didn’t match the results of an online survey asking which image would lead a consumer to choose an attorney. You can read about that in the articles.

One thing I didn’t mention in my contributions there: There are a lot of really bad avatars/images being used for Google authorship and on social networking sites. When Mike first invited me to take part in his project, I thought it was a bit much to study the effectiveness of avatars in Google search results; i.e., does it really matter?

But now, as I find myself paying more attention to those images, I see a lot of room for improvement. And I think a bad image/avatar really can cause problems.

Do you agree? Check out Mike’s articles, comment over on them, and feel free to tell me in the comments below … How much thought do you give to your online avatar?

(Stock image via Shutterstock.com. Used under license.)

Comments (2)

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  1. Cari McGee says:

    The avatar I liked best is the avatar you liked best. I think that’s because you and I find the same thing similarly attractive (as we find one another attractive). I’d also choose that person to be my lawyer, and not the other guy that most people picked.

    What a fascinating study! I have had more than one client tell me they picked me because of my picture in an ad. They said I looked honest. But, people are looking for different things from a Realtor than they are from a lawyer.

  2. Kent says:

    For Linkedin profile, it is the right avatar. It depends on which profile and where do you use the avatar.