Searching Yelp with Emojis

This week we’re coming to you with something relatively short and relatively sweet. If you’re an avid listener to the podcast side of Review Party Dot Com, feel free to tag this as an abbreviated segment of Upon Further Review. If you’re not a listener, what gives? All you need to do is click Episodes up there, and you’ll be set!

So, yes, as the title indicates, you can use emojis to search on Yelp.

After a 2013 Yelp hackathon, the feature was officially rolled out to all app users in early 2014. Yes, that is ages ago, but there are plenty of things you don’t learn until way after they happen.

So why bother? What’s the point?

Well. Is there a point to using emojis in general, that we really need to explain? They’re an image that describes something, and sometimes using them is shorter and more effective than typing the whole word. Or sometimes just they’re fun. I assume.

But do they work? Well, you can see a lot of results in our lead image, but here are a few more queries.

Not too shabby on the seasonal (at time of writing) search.

These are pretty straightforward as well, but it is still reassuring to see they hit the mark. But now let’s throw a curveball, eh?

Not too shabby, huh? Even if there isn’t a logical business associated with an emoji, the name of the emoji itself can be used as a search term.

Again, is this overly useful? Maybe not. Maybe if you use emojis A LOT. But if nothing else, it’s a neat little trick.