SEO for Emoji, Photos, Visuals, and Graphics: Can You Rank for Emoji-Based Searches?

Emoji Marketing

For Generation Z, things have actually changed a lot – meetups have now come down to conference calls and facial expressions have been replaced by even more expressive emojis and gif exchanges over the chatting.  And in the times when photos, graphics, visuals, and emojis are being preferred more as a communication medium by the millennium rather than even typing a message, marketers really need to pay attention to this changing online culture. 

Remember the times when website domains had just started coming in and there were just a handful of people who had invested in common word domains like greetings.com, holidays.com, and business.com? Well! They turned out to be the smart ones and they earned profits of millions of dollars by selling those domains when the internet became all about how we do business.

Emojis may have the same fate. In fact, if you would have noticed Google started allowing its users to search for anything by using emojis in 2016, while Yahoo, Yelp, and Bing were already providing emoji searches for quite some time now.

But before we get started with how the emoji and graphic culture is going to benefit the marketers to promote their websites, let’s first understand what the terms photos, graphics, visuals, and emojis actually refer to.

Yes, people! However, we often use them as they are not interchangeable terms.

·         Photos are the original pictures that are clicked firsthand
·         Graphics are designs created on some surface like canvas, wall or to illustrate
·         Visuals are the created imageries outside the live-action context
·         Emojis are the smileys and ideograms used in electronic communication modes

The Rise of Emoji SEO

If you search by using emoji in Google’s Image search engine can provide you the results, then it will bring you the real images of the emoji used. In fact, many of the top results show the emoji itself too. In fact, even if you search using an emoji in the general Google search engine, it will show you the results and businesses relevant to that emoji.

For instance, if you search by using ‘cake emoji + near me’ and your location is on, then it will show you the results of pizza places that are near your area. However, the thing worth noting here is that the businesses shown in the result have neither used any of the emojis on their website nor in their meta description.

And since the trend of using emoji just seem to be on the rise, with more than 92% of people using the internet finding it easier to use emojis to express their thoughts and views rather than typing, marketers sure have a bandwagon to jump on and benefit from. And with recent popular marketing campaigns like Deadpool’s billboard putting emojis to perfect use, it seems like the adorable smileys which are present in different genres including facial expressions, products, and foods are just going to expand the creativity horizon in the future.

Incorporating Emojis in SEO

So, now comes the major question "How can emojis be used for online content to ensure that a website is SEO-oriented?" We have been seeing the use of emojis in various marketing campaigns, but how can they be used for ranking? Or how can they be beneficial in domains as GoDaddy has now started allowing the user to register a domain name consisting of emojis?

Emojis are Search Terms

When a user searches for anything online, there are different types of search terms being used, and currently, emoji searches for each type of term seem to be showing different results, which we are going to discuss:

Local Searches

If you use just the cake emoji in the search box, then there is a higher probability of it showing the results related to that emoji or its description. However, just adding terms like ‘near me’ or ‘around me’ along with the cake emoji provides the results of places that provide cakes around the location detected.

Branded Searches

Using a ‘cycle emoji + for sale’ surprisingly didn’t necessarily show any results of businesses selling a cycle. Rather, Google currently lists the posts that have an emoji of cycle used in them and have the word sale in them, including all YouTube videos and social media posts.

City Searches

Even if you are not searching for something locally but use an emoji of pizza along with any city name, say Ontario, then Google shows up some relevant results with a list of places that serve pizza in Ontario City.

Based on these search results, you must be wondering if Google is simply translating the emoji to its textual meaning to search for relevant results, but that is not the case. The results shown with search terms “Pizza Near Me” and “pizza emoji + near me” are actually quite different if you would look them up on Google.

This implies that Google is using different algorithms while searching for emoji inputs than their text equivalents. So, there lies a huge potential in figuring out the methods to optimize emoji searches and if you can come up with some relevant theory, you will surely get the first-mover benefit.

Final Thoughts

If you are thinking why would people search using emojis when they can type (and are used to it) then you are certainly ignoring a huge lot of the online audience that likes to communicate only through emojis, and the number is only increasing. And being a marketer, you certainly cannot afford to miss a trend that is rising and seems to have huge future potential.


Ashish Sharma
Ashish Sharma is a Content writer and Key Account Manager, looking for Marketing Strategies and building new business tie-ups at WeDigTech - A Mobile App Development Company in India. Focused on helping enterprises StartUps from domestic to MNCs.



Gangadhar Kulkarni

Gangadhar Kulkarni is an internet marketing expert and consultant having extensive experience in digital marketing. He is also the founder of Seogdk and Director at DigiTechMantra Solutions, a one-stop shop for all that your website needs. It provides you cost-effective and efficient content writing and digital marketing services.

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