Google Now Shows Emoji Characters On Desktop Results But Doesn’t Let You Search By Them Like Bing

Google is now showing emoji characters in full color in the desktop search results, ultimately giving those web pages using those characters more visibility in the search results.

Dan Barker was first to spot this and post it on Twitter. Here is a screen shot of how it looks on Google desktop.

This has been working on mobile searches since 2012 but has never shown up on desktop searches until this week.

One would have to assume Google didn’t turn these on, on purpose, unless they pulled a Bing and enabled searchers to search by emoji. That isn’t the case, I tried searching to [buy ] on Google and it didn’t come up with relevant results, as Bing did for [buy ].

Jennifer Slegg said, “I suspect spammers will have a field day using these emojis when it comes to decorating up their search results.” Indeed, and I wonder if Google will disable it or if there is a new search feature coming soon.

Yahoo currently disables the ability for Emoji’s to show up in their search results.

I suspect it might have not been something Google has done but rather how browsers are now supporting more mobile character features?

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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 very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on social media at @rustybrick, +BarrySchwartz and Facebook. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio and disclosures, click over here.