Using Emojis in content?

[JesterMagic]

Our forum uses smiles that are image based and I was thinking of moving over to text emoji's.

Lots of visitors already add emoji's via their phone keyboard to posts.

From my understanding emojis have been supported in browsers since 2015 so I would think that would cover the majority of browsers people are using these days.

Anyone see any issues with switching over either with browsers or via google with Search results?

[lucy24]

emojis have been supported in browsers since 2015

It's less about browser support than about the operating system as a whole. Normal browsers have supported font substitution since approximately 1997, and That One Browser since at least the week before last, but this is no help if a lot of your users are on elderly computers that don't happen to have any of the emoji fonts installed in the first place. And only you know your users. At a minimum, check periodically on the oldest Android you can find, and make sure there aren't any unexpected gaps. If, as your posts suggests, most people are now using recent smartphones, then go for it.

[JesterMagic]

Good point. for Windows I see anything Vista and lower does not support emoji. Windows 8.1 and higher support color emoji.

For Mac 10.6 and lower doesn't support emoji.

[JesterMagic]

One advantage to using emojis is that they do show up in the search results which tends to draw the eye towards the listing.

[TravisDGarrett]

One advantage to using emojis is that they do show up in the search results which tends to draw the eye towards the listing.

I guess it's not going to last. I am old enough to remember when you could put the HTML or ASCII code of arrows (or all kind of symbols) in the title tag of a page, and it was showing in the the Google SERP :-)