Emoji Optimization Optimization Tools Pay-Per-Click Ranking Search Engine Marketing

Is Google Playing Whac-A-Mole with Emoji Bidding on PPC Ads?

November 2, 2017 by Alvin Brown No Comments
Written by: Alvin Brown

From buildings to phones to emails to tv shows to movies to domain names, emoji have taken over almost every area of life known to man.

Barry Schwartz’s latest article sounds like pay-per-click advertising is the next target ripe for emoji marketing spending.

Since the beginning of the year, numerous articles have outlined that using emoji in PPC ad copy is against the terms and conditions of some PPC ad networks, specifically Google Adwords.

I think it’s interesting that Google allows organic search results for emoji-relevant queries yet doesn’t allow PPC ads to use emoji per qualifying emoji as invalid or unsupported characters via the Adwords Policy’s “Punctation and symbols” Section.

But not so fast there! Dan Perach, a PPC Shopping Channel Specialist, posted via his Twitter account that he had encountered his first sighting of the 🌹emoji as a search term.

Upon further review, Dan’s PPC ad campaign appears to render impressions and clicks (expensive clicks, too!) when searchers use the 🌹 emoji as a keyword phrase.

But again, if Google doesn’t allow emoji usage for PPC ads, then why and how in the world was Dan able to bid on ads using the 🌹emoji as a search keyword?

Hmm… something seems a bit off. I attempted a few searches using the 🌹 emoji followed by a few keywords, hoping to trigger ad results.

To my surprise, my few searches did render a few ads, however, rendered PPC ads did not make use of the 🌹 emoji in their ad titles, copy, or URL.

emoji in organic search results

I’m not sure what to make of this finding, although it seems like a case of “whac-a-mole”. Nevertheless, Google is likely to qualify Dan’s finding as an Adwords bug of some sort.

Whether a bug or not, optimizing pay-per-click ads to target emoji-friendly searches might be the next area of interest for emoji to penetrate and gain a foothold (if not already doing so).

Would you consider optimizing your PPC ads for emoji or target emoji searches?

Share:
Written by Alvin Brown
He's an experienced and passionate serial entrepreneur, founder and publisher of Kickstart Commerce. Alvin possesses a great love for startups dominating their market using profitable digital strategies for greater commerce.