Notably, the new system (developed by an intern, Bethany) prioritizes captions over its source description. Giphy does take care to prevent this from overriding common searches, though. Looking for "happy birthday" won't suddenly turn up every celebratory movie scene.

To no one's surprise, the new feature had a dramatic influence when put to the test in the summer. Many more people were clicking through to GIFs when they searched for phrases (32 percent more for "never give up never surrender," for example). In other words, visitors are actually getting the GIFs they looked for. That's rather important for a company whose business revolves around originals and cutting deals with media creators, and it increases the odds that you'll come back.