What is a favicon?
A favicon, short for favorites icon, is the small image that represents your site in browser tabs, bookmarks, history, and home screen shortcuts. Google also shows it next to your site name in search results, most visibly on mobile, which makes it part of how your listing looks.
A favicon has no direct effect on rankings. It affects recognition: a clear, distinctive icon helps people spot your site in a tab bar or a crowded results page.
How it works
Browsers look for a <link rel="icon"> tag in the head. If there is none, most request /favicon.ico at the root of the site. Modern sites usually provide a small set of files: an ICO or PNG for browsers, an SVG that scales cleanly, and an apple-touch-icon (180 by 180 pixels) for iOS home screens.
For search results, Google's guidelines say the favicon must be a square (1:1) image of at least 8 by 8 pixels, with 48 by 48 or larger recommended, at a stable URL that Googlebot is allowed to crawl. The home page must declare it, and Google crawls it with a dedicated user agent. Google will not show a favicon it considers inappropriate, and changes can take weeks to appear.
Example
<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico" sizes="32x32" />
<link rel="icon" href="/icon.svg" type="image/svg+xml" />
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/apple-touch-icon.png" />
Design at small size first. A detailed logo that looks fine at 512 pixels often becomes a smudge at 16. A single letter or simplified mark usually reads better.
In WordPress
WordPress calls it the Site Icon. Upload a square image of at least 512 by 512 pixels in the Customizer's Site Identity panel, or through the Site Logo block's Use as site icon option in block themes, and WordPress generates the sizes and prints the link tags. If a physical favicon.ico is also in the site root, keep them consistent. The hydrogenseo.com bulk audit flags pages that declare no favicon.
Common mistakes
- No favicon, which shows a generic globe in tabs and results.
- Blocking the icon file in robots.txt, so Google cannot fetch it.
- A non-square image that gets squashed or rejected.
- Changing icons often, which delays updates in search.
Common questions
What size should a favicon be?
Provide a square image of at least 48 by 48 pixels for Google, plus the common 16, 32, and 180 pixel sizes for browsers and iOS. WordPress generates these from a 512 pixel Site Icon.
Why is Google not showing my favicon?
Common causes are a missing link tag on the home page, a non-square or tiny image, the file being blocked by robots.txt, or Google not having recrawled it yet.