Back in 2015, Google promised to drop emojis from the search results and they did for the most part but something recently changed. Emojis are now showing up again in the search results snippets, even in the desktop results. Ben hat tipped me on this on Twitter and I can replicate it.
Here are some screen shots showing off emojis in Google's search results:
If I had to guess, this is a Google bug and eventually the emojis will start disappearing from the Google search results. But I've been wrong plenty of times.
Personally, I like the emojis in the search results. 😄
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: Google has confirmed emojis are back in the search results going forward for relevant emoji queries. Google told me:
I can confirm that we have added a feature to our snippets to feature emojis where relevant, useful and fun. You'll see them crop up across various snippets moving forward.
