Nothing personal Sam, but to me “search for the word emoji … not providing much value” begs the question, “what exactly would you consider to be of value?”
Kind of depends on what exactly one is looking for, no?
IMHO successful results depends greatly on ones search foo, good UI, and good search features.
As far as I’m concerned as a somewhat veteran user as opposed to a newbie, Discourse search works great. I can “sort by”, go to advanced search, and eg. search for
emoji large
emoji fontawesome
emoji tone
emoji email
and get more fine tuned sets of results.
I have the feeling what this discussion is more about is how to have search have something like Google “ads” where a site could promote certain topics for searches that use certain “keywords”
As a rough analogy, If I go to a restaurant wanting roast beef rare, I ask for roast beef rare. If I go to a restaurant knowing I want seafood, but I am undecided about what seafood exactly, I ask the waiter for his recommendation.
I think having something like an “Admin Like” could work, but I’m not sure how to go about tying it to specific words.