What is a favicon?
Where favicons appear including Google's mobile SERP since 2019, Google's crawlable-square-48px requirements, formats and sizes, and why yours might not be shown.
A favicon is the small icon that represents your site — the little square you see in a browser tab, next to a bookmark, and in your history. It is short for “favorite icon.” What most people do not realize is that since 2019 your favicon also appears next to your page in Google’s mobile search results, which turns a purely cosmetic detail into a small but real piece of how your brand shows up in search.
Where favicons appear
The favicon shows up in more places than the browser tab: bookmarks and the bookmarks bar, browser history, the tab’s entry when you have many open, the icon saved when someone adds your site to a phone home screen, and — the one that matters for search — beside your result and site name in Google’s mobile SERP. That last placement is why favicons crossed over from a branding nicety into something worth getting technically correct.
Google’s favicon requirements
For Google to show your favicon in search, it has to meet a few conditions. There must be a <link rel="icon"> (or an accepted equivalent like shortcut icon or apple-touch-icon) in the homepage <head>. The favicon file must be crawlable — not blocked by robots.txt. It must be a square, and its size should be a multiple of 48px (48×48, 96×96, 144×144, and so on) — Google scales it down, so a larger multiple is fine, but a tiny 16×16 alone is not ideal. The URL should be stable, and the icon should be consistent across your site.
Formats and sizes
The classic format is .ico, which can pack several sizes into one file and is still widely supported. Modern sites usually serve a PNG or SVG and declare multiple sizes for different contexts — a small one for the tab and a larger, 48px-multiple one for Google and home-screen shortcuts. Providing a clear, high-contrast icon that is legible at 16 pixels is more important than the format you choose: at tab size, fine detail disappears, so a simple mark reads better than a shrunken full logo.
Why Google might not show yours
If your favicon is missing from mobile search, the usual causes are: the file is blocked by robots.txt so Google cannot fetch it; it is not square or smaller than 48px; there is no rel="icon" declaration Google can find; the icon changed recently and Google has not recrawled the homepage yet (this can take time); or the declaration is inconsistent across pages. Google also reserves the right not to show one it deems low quality or inappropriate.
How to check yours
Our favicon checker confirms your favicon is present, references a real crawlable file, and is declared correctly — the fastest way to see why Google might be skipping it. The meta tag checker shows the <link> declarations in your <head> alongside your other tags, so you can confirm the rel="icon" reference is actually there.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a favicon?
- A favicon (short for 'favorite icon') is the small square icon that represents a website. It appears in browser tabs, next to bookmarks, in browser history, on home-screen shortcuts, and — since 2019 — beside your page in Google's mobile search results.
- Does a favicon affect SEO?
- A favicon is not a ranking factor, so it won't change where you rank. But because it appears next to your result in Google's mobile search, a clear, recognizable icon can make your listing look more trustworthy than a generic globe placeholder, which may improve click-through — an indirect benefit rather than a ranking effect.
- What are Google's favicon requirements?
- The homepage must have a link rel='icon' (or equivalent) in its head, the favicon file must be crawlable and not blocked by robots.txt, and the image must be square with a size that is a multiple of 48px (48×48, 96×96, and so on). The URL should be stable and the icon consistent across the site.
- What size and format should a favicon be?
- Provide a square icon whose size is a multiple of 48px for Google and home-screen use; you can also include a small 16×16 for the browser tab. The .ico format is traditional and can hold multiple sizes, but PNG or SVG works well too. Most important is a simple, high-contrast design that stays legible at 16 pixels.
- Why isn't my favicon showing in Google search?
- Common causes are the favicon file being blocked by robots.txt so Google can't fetch it, an icon that isn't square or is smaller than 48px, a missing rel='icon' declaration, a recent change Google hasn't recrawled yet, or inconsistent declarations across pages. Google may also decline to show one it considers low quality.
- Where does a favicon appear?
- In the browser tab, in bookmarks and the bookmarks bar, in browser history, as the icon when a site is saved to a phone home screen, and next to your result and site name in Google's mobile search results. That last placement is why getting the favicon technically correct matters for search visibility.