What is a favicon?
A favicon is the small icon that stands for your site: in the browser tab, in bookmarks, on a phone's home screen, and next to your site's name in search results. You add it with a link tag in the page's head. For Google, it has to be square, at least 8 pixels, in a format Google lists, and declared on your home page. SVG, the format many modern sites use, is not on Google's list. Of the 4 sites I run, one declared only an SVG icon when I last checked.
What it looks like in the HTML
<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico" sizes="any">
<link rel="icon" href="/icon.svg" type="image/svg+xml">
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/apple-touch-icon.png">The browser picks the best icon from what you declare. If you declare none, browsers fall back to asking for /favicon.ico at the root of the site, which is why that file shows up in server logs even on sites that never made one.
Google's rules for the icon in search results
From Google Search Central's favicon page, read 9 November 2026:
- Square, and at least 8 by 8 pixels. Google recommends larger than 48 by 48, so it looks good on every surface.
- A format Google lists: BMP, GIF, ICO, PNG, JPEG, PPM or TIFF. SVG and WebP are not on the list.
- On the home page. Put the link tag in the head of your home page. Google supports one favicon per hostname, so a subdomain needs its own, and a section of a site can't have a different one.
- Crawlable. Googlebot-Image must be able to fetch the file, and robots.txt must not block the icon or the home page.
- A stable address. Google asks you not to change the favicon's URL often.
- Patience. Google says a new favicon can take from several days to several weeks to appear, and that a favicon is not guaranteed to appear at all.
Google reads four kinds of link for this: icon, shortcut icon, apple-touch-icon and apple-touch-icon-precomposed.
SVG: fine for browsers, not on Google's list
SVG favicons are popular because one small file stays sharp at every size, and Chromium browsers and Firefox support them. But Google Search's list of favicon formats does not include SVG. The safe setup is the one above: an ICO or PNG icon for everything that needs a bitmap, an SVG for browsers that want it, and an apple-touch-icon for phones.
What four real sites declare
I read the home page of 4 sites I run on 9 November 2026 and fetched every icon they declared.
| Sites | |
|---|---|
| Declare a favicon in the head | 4 of 4 |
| Have a 180 by 180 apple-touch-icon | 4 of 4 |
| Declare only an SVG as their icon | 1 of 4 |
| Return 404 for /favicon.ico | 1 of 4 |
| Block the icon in robots.txt | 0 of 4 |
An SVG-only site is probably still covered in Google, because Google also reads apple-touch-icon, and every one of these sites has a PNG there. But that rests on one tag. Adding a PNG or ICO icon of at least 48 pixels makes it certain, and stops the 404s for /favicon.ico. One of the sites did exactly that on the day I first checked.
The sizes worth making
| File | Size | Used by |
|---|---|---|
| favicon.ico or a PNG icon | 48 pixels or larger, square | Browsers, and Google Search results |
| icon.svg | Any (it scales) | Modern browser tabs |
| apple-touch-icon.png | 180 by 180 | iPhone and iPad home screens |
| Manifest icons | 192 and 512 pixels | Installed web apps on Chromium browsers |
Does a favicon help SEO?
Not as a ranking signal. Google's favicon page says nothing about rankings. What it changes is how your result looks: a recognisable icon beside your name in the results, and in a crowded list of tabs. Treat it as part of looking finished, not as a way to move up.
What Check Engine checks
Check Engine fetches the icons your home page declares to make sure at least one is a real image file, not an error page served in its place, and falls back to /favicon.ico when none of them works. It reports when no usable favicon is found. It does not check the icon's format against Google's list, so an SVG-only favicon is worth checking by eye. If your icon still isn't showing in Google, our guide to a favicon missing from search walks through the usual causes.
Sources
- Google, favicon in search results
- HTML standard, rel="icon"
- MDN, the link element
- web.dev, an adaptive SVG favicon
- web.dev, the web app manifest
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Common questions
What size should a favicon be?
Google requires a square of at least 8 pixels and recommends larger than 48. A 48-pixel or larger PNG or ICO, plus an SVG for browsers and a 180-pixel apple-touch-icon, covers search, tabs and phones.
Does Google support SVG favicons?
Google Search's favicon page lists BMP, GIF, ICO, PNG, JPEG, PPM and TIFF, and not SVG. Browsers support SVG, so use it alongside a PNG or ICO icon, not instead of one.
Why isn't my favicon showing in Google?
Common causes: it isn't declared on the home page, it isn't square, it's smaller than 8 pixels, it's in a format Google doesn't list, robots.txt blocks it, or Google hasn't recrawled yet, which can take several weeks.
Do I still need a favicon.ico file?
Not for Google, which reads the icon you declare. But browsers and other tools ask for /favicon.ico when nothing is declared, so having one avoids a stream of 404s.