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Expedia Adds Emoji To Its Title Tags To Increase Click Through Rates In Google

In an effort to increase SEO sales, Expedia tests adding Emoji characters to some of their page title tags.

Barry Schwartz on April 30, 2015 at 10:02 am

A week ago, we reported that Google began displaying Emoji in the desktop search results. We anticipated that search marketers would begin to leverage this change by adding Emoji to their title tags, hoping the additional imagery in the search results would lead to more visibility and a higher click through rate.

It seems that Expedia, the massive travel search service, has done that.

Here is a picture of their snippet for a search on [cape canaveral hotels] and yes, the third organic listing I see has the hotel Emoji:

Expedia seems to be testing the Emoji on select pages, as I can’t get them to show up for all queries and clicking through to the site, only select pages have Emoji added to their title tags.

Here is another example I spotted for [cheap flights to Portland]:

This one uses the airline seat Emoji, while the hotel listing uses a hotel Emoji.

This tip was sent to us by Jonathan Alonso, SEO Analyst at GoPortCanaveral.com.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.