Google announced on Twitter that you can tweet to it at @google with emojis and get back local search results.

For example, go to Twitter and type 🍔 @google or 🌸 @google and it should respond with a link to get local results for hamburger places or a place to buy flowers.

Here are the results I personally got:

This result takes me to a query for [flower shop nearby].

This result takes me to a query for [burgers nearby].

It does take a couple minutes for Google to respond, I have to doubt that this is not automated. At least I hope there isn’t a human responding. 🙂

How much use is this? Honestly, not much, but it is fun shtick.

This one gave me PGA scores:

It didn’t understand the hospital emoji, so technically, I can be dead already:

Forum discussion at Twitter & Local Search Forums.