#KnowNearby: Every Emoji You Can Tweet at Google for Instant Local Links [Infographic]

Allen Finn — January 8, 2017

Did you just decide to hunt down the best burger in Boston? Curious about craft cocktails in Charleston? Do you just want to know if the ominous stormclouds overhead will open up any time soon? Google’s got you covered (just not in the way you might think).

Many of the questions you may have typed into a search engine can now be answered on Twitter: as long as your inquiry can be distilled into a single emoji, Google will respond via tweet with a helpful link, a quippy pun, and the hashtag #KnowNearby.

While the ability to work emoji into AdWords copy was short lived, Google’s new method of leveraging Larry’s favorite digital hieroglyphs appears to be here to stay. Google claims that there are around 200 emoji that will yield a response at this point, and many more receive a response of “under construction” instead of “let’s try another” or “does not compute.”

We’ve put together an infographic detailing which emoji Google responds to on Twitter and, more importantly, what they respond with.

But first…

How Does it Work?

If you’re familiar with Twitter, this’ll be old hat.

All you need to do is tweet @Google with a single emoji…

And if the emoji you’ve tweeted is one of hundreds that Google currently recognizes, you’ll receive a response! Many have a corresponding GIF (see below), though some of the cheekier ones (I’m looking at you, eggplant) only result in a puny tweet and a link.

Now, it doesn’t seem to work when you string together a handful of emoji (context becomes muddied at that point, it would seem), and there are hundreds of emoji that don’t currently yield a link. Instead, you’ll see something that looks like this:

Curious as to exactly which emoji google will respond to? You’re in luck…

Which Emoji do Google Respond to on Twitter?

Some Emoji We’d Love To See Google Respond To On Twitter

In the event Google decides to introduce more emoji responses, we’ve got a few suggestions (most of them are transportation-related)

Plane Landing / Plane Taking Off

It’d be great if, by tweeting a plan landing or taking off, Google could respond with arrivals and departures at the nearest airport.

Cars

In an unnavigable city like Boston, knowing where traffic is (and how to avoid it) can be the difference between getting somewhere on time and tearing your hair out. It would be phenomenal if, simply by tweeting a car emoji at google, you could get a traffic report (or a Google map with your current location pinned).

Astrological Signs

While I don’t care must for astrology, I think the astrological emoji offer fertile ground for some silly puns and interesting SERPS. If Google’s going to respond to eggplants and peaches with tongue in cheek tomfoolery, why not have a bit of fun with these as well?

Unicorn

Nobody loves unicorns quite like Larry. As homage to our founder’s obsession, it’d be baller if Google would respond to the unicorn emoji with a link to WordStream :).

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Google is the king of perpetual updates: if you discover any emoji that we haven’t covered (or you’ve got suggestions of your own to add to our list), please share them with us on Twitter or in the comments below!

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