As you likely know, emoji are small pictures used to express an idea or emotion. With the explosion of mobile devices and the ubiquity of texting, it has become a shorthand language used by billions of us around the world. At Bing we want you to be able to search the same way you communicate every day.

Today, we are announcing the support of emoji characters in Bing search in all English markets. With this new feature, you can search using your favorite emoji, and Bing will return results based on the semantic meaning of the emoji.

Ever been confused by the meaning of some of the emoji? Bing isn’t, and can help.

But emoji search on Bing can be even more powerful than just finding out an emoji’s meaning. You can combine them to create more multi-word searches. Donuts in Seattle, anyone?

Selecting with emoji may even surprise you.

– Nick Roberts, Senior Program Manager, Bing Relevance & Intent