Emojis are great for being used inside of messages and on social media posts, but apparently Google doesn’t feel the same way about them when it comes to search results. For a while it’s been possible to use emojis in search results on the mobile platform, and earlier this year Google introduced the same capability to search on the desktop. It would seem that everything was fine and dandy up until just a few weeks ago when Google had first mentioned that they would be removing the emojis from search results on both mobile and desktop, where it had only seen a short life span.
Google doesn’t explicitly list any details or reasons as to why they are removing emjois from search results, but it could very well have to do with how some websites are using emojis in an attempt at increase their user engagement and clicks by listing emojis along with their title links. Following this change any websites that are using emojis will continue being listed in the search results rankings, but Google will no longer be displaying the emoji in the search results list. The good news is that Google’s removal of the tiny pictures won’t have any effect on the search rankings of websites which use them.
In regards to the emoji, prior to the takedown the emoji icons that were being used by websites were inserted as part of the title link in the search list, so those searching for something with a coffee emoji might see some results in the search list with a coffee emoji before the title. No longer, however. This seemingly doesn’t extend to the use of emojis within the actual web address itself though, so for now those will still appear unless Google decides to remove those too at some point in the near future. Currently Google hasn’t mentioned anything about removing emojis from the URL’s, so it’s safe to assume those are sticking around for a little bit longer. What’s interesting is that most users probably didn’t pay much attention to the presence of emojis in search results in the first place, so with them being gone many users may not even notice.