Tag Archive for: emoji search

 Emojis

It was fun while it lasted, but Google has followed through on their promise to remove emojis from titles in search results.

In April, Expedia became the first major brand to start experimenting using emojis in search results titles. For example, a search listing for beach rentals may have included a wave emoji on Expedia listings.

It wasn’t long until many other major brands followed suit, but Google ultimately decided the trend was not something they wanted to promote. During a Google Hangout in early May, John Mueller, a webmaster trends analyst for Google, announced the search giant would be removing the emojis.

True to Mueller’s word, emojis disappeared from search results early this morning, as first noticed by Jennifer Slegg at The SEM Post.

Notably, Google has only seemed to remove the emojis from titles. Norwegian Airlines, known for creating the very first emoji URL, appears to be unaffected.

While the hearts, waves, and smiley faces are gone from Google, emojis are still currently appearing in Bing searches. Microsoft’s search engine started showing emojis in title tags shortly after they began appearing in Google, but there’s no word if they intend to follow Google in phasing them out now.

Emoji’s have become an essential part of every day communication for many smartphone owners, and now they appear to be making their way to search engines. On Monday, Bing announced their search engine would now be capable of recognizing emojis and using them as a search term.

“With the explosion of mobile devices and the ubiquity of texting, it has become a shorthand language used by billions of us around the world,” wrote Nick Roberts, senior program manager at Bing Relevance & Intent, in a blog post. “We want you to be able to search the same way you communicate every day.”

Users can search for single emojis, or you can combine them in a mix of text and emoji as they are typically used in text messaging. Notably, Yahoo and Duck Duck Go are also capable of recognizing emojis, but Google is not.

You can see examples of what this looks like below:

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