Google is now showing emoji characters in full color in their desktop search results, giving the web pages more cheerful visibility in the SERP.
Here is a screen shot of how the result looks like on Google desktop.
This has been working on mobile searches since 2012. However, it has never shown up on desktop searches until this week.
Many people on the industry assume that Google didn’t turn these on purposely, unless they pulled a similar move like Bing and enabled searchers to search by emoji.
On the other hand, Yahoo currently disables the ability for Emoji’s to show up in their search results.
Being able to include emoji in the search result might be a great opportunity for savvy online marketers, as they can use them to attract more customers, especially Generation Y. Still, the phenomenon might have not been something Google has done but rather how browsers are now supporting more mobile character features.