You’ve probably seen emojis in website titles and headings, but what about in a URL?
This blog post is a test to see if Google and other search engines will index web pages that contains an emoji in the URL.
How to Use an Emoji in a URL
This website is powered by WordPress, and the URL address of this page is https://tonyteaches.tech/🤔/. With WordPress, it was as easy as pasting in the thinking emoji (🤔) to the URL slug of this post. WordPress accepted the emoji it without complaining, so I decided to publish.
As of now, I only tested this with the latest version of Google Chrome and Safari on my MacBook. I would imagine that other modern web browsers probably support emojis in URLs. In any case, your URL with an emoji should still be accessible via plain text. For example, the current URL https://tonyteaches.tech/🤔/ is equivalent to https://tonyteaches.tech/%F0%9F%A4%94/. The string of %F0%9F%A4%94 is simply the UTF-8 encoding for the 🤔 emoji.
Does Google Index URLs with Emojis?
Google does indeed index URLs that contain emojis. The web page that you are currently on has been indexed by Google and contains an emoji in the URL.
Here is a screenshot of how Google indexed this page.
Notice how Google properly displays the emoji in the URL path. For reference, the browser in the screenshot it Google Chrome.
🤔 Why Use Emojis on Your Website?
A great deal of my websites use emojis in the section headings, just like this section heading. Specifically, I try to use emojis on my about pages.
For example, check out this website’s about page. You’ll notice that each section heading starts with an emoji.
Similarly, these other websites of mine also use emojis in the section headings of the about page:
I like doing this because it not only adds come color to my page (without being tacky), but also is unique and eye-catching.
