November 29, 2016

GoDaddy launches search engine for emoji domain names

The Registrar claims to make it easy to register emoji-based domain names

Earlier this month, GoDaddy announced the ability to search emoji integrated web URLs through their website. According to reports, emoji was named as the world’s fastest growing language last year and the trend is making its way into website names.

The company has released a search engine to help customers find and register emoji-based domain names. According to GoDaddy, the integrated emoji search was developed by a GoDaddy developer during the GoDaddy TechComm Hackathon earlier this year. GoDaddy claimed that emoji integration with URLs is the next step after the usage of emojis in personal conversations and online interaction.

GoDaddy commented :

Most people have no idea they can just type a bunch of hearts in their address bar and go to a domain.

The company said said that what has been preventing emoji domain names from taking off is the difficulty in registering them and that is where the new search engine steps in. They also said that behind the scenes, all domains are ASCII, even if one sees the domain name displayed as an emoji. The key thing to know is that the browser uses a strategy called punycoding to convert emojis to ASCII.

GoDaddy added :

Until now, emoji domain names been difficult to register.

One has to have a reasonably sophisticated knowledge of punycode and what not to even look to see whether domains are available. From there, the setup is a bit of a pain.