In case you missed it: emojis are here to stay. Originating in Japan in the late 90s, emojis have become increasingly popular in the U.S. and around the world since their inclusion in Apple’s iPhone. According to a 2015 report, roughly 92 percent of the online population is already using emojis. Major brands and celebrities are joining the trend, some even creating their own emojis. Last December, Kim Kardashian “broke” the Apple App Store, launching her own line of “Kimojis“, including some that are NSFW (insert blushing face emoji).
Back in 2014, Bing and Yahoo enabled search by emojis but Google had not yet jumped on the bandwagon. But, it looks like Google is finally drinking the Kool-Aid; you can now search on both desktop or mobile using emoji characters.
One of the key difference between emoji searches on Google vs. Bing is that Google shows a set of results for the emoji character with emojis, while Bing just shows results for the character. For example, when you search for the “apple” emoji on Google, it shows you apple-related emoji results but when you search for the “apple” emoji on Bing, it shows results for apples, Apple.com, etc.
Naturally, I had to try it out:
In my “cow” emoji search, the search functionality works especially well on Google’s Image search. However, there are a few exceptions– Google still needs to work on the image results for the “unicorn” emoji.
H/T David Naylor for spotting this update.
Rachel Racoosin is a Senior Digital Strategist at LEVICK and a contributing author to Tomorrow.
