Signals Colour, type and surface
Emoji doing the work of icons
- Category
- Colour, type and surface
- Direction
- Pushes the score up
- Weight
- +10
What it is
The visual defaults, applied unedited. Looks are the weakest evidence in the whole set. Anyone can reach for a gradient on purpose, which is why craft damps this entire category.
How it is weighted
10 points is mid-weight: real evidence, not a smoking gun. On its own it moves the number a few points.
What to do about it
Take the emoji out of headings, navigation and list markers. Emoji render differently on every platform, cannot be styled, and are announced literally by screen readers.
Where it fires
Of the homepages we scan as worked examples, this signal fired on 2:
- craigslist.org 14/100 — 5 emoji sitting in headings, navigation or list markers. A real icon set requires deciding what each glyph means; emoji let you skip that.
- vercel.com 21/100 — 3 emoji sitting in headings, navigation or list markers. A real icon set requires deciding what each glyph means; emoji let you skip that.