Favicon checker
Check whether your site’s icon meets Google’s rules for showing beside your search results, and what to fix if it doesn’t. Free, with no sign-up.
Favicons: a plain-English guide
37 Digital’s free favicon checker reads your site’s home page – where Google looks for a favicon – and checks the icon against Google’s published rules for showing one beside your search results: the icon link, the file’s real format, size and shape, and whether robots.txt lets Google crawl your home page and icon. It previews the icon and gives a plain-English fix for each problem.
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What is a favicon?
A favicon is the small, square icon that stands for your website in browser tabs, bookmarks and Google’s search results. Website builders often call it a site icon or browser icon.
It’s set by a link in your home page’s <head>, such as <link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico">. Google supports icon, the older shortcut icon, apple-touch-icon and apple-touch-icon-precomposed. With no link, the HTML standard lets browsers try /favicon.ico instead. Google’s guidelines don’t say whether it does, so our checker warns when that’s all you have.
Why isn’t my favicon showing on Google?
Google may not have crawled your home page since the icon was added, or the icon may break one of the rules in Google’s favicon guidelines. Google says crawling can take several days to several weeks, and that even an icon meeting every rule isn’t guaranteed to appear.
| Rule | What Google asks for | What our checker does |
|---|---|---|
| Icon link | One of those links in the home page’s <head>. The icon can be on another site, such as a CDN. | Lists your icon links and opens one, or /favicon.ico if there are none |
| Home page | One favicon per hostname, from its home page. A subdomain such as shop.example.com can have its own; a section such as example.com/shop can’t. | Reads the home page of the address you enter, after any redirects |
| Crawling | Googlebot must be able to crawl the home page, and Googlebot-Image the icon | Checks your robots.txt for both. An icon on another site comes under that site’s robots.txt, which we don’t read. |
| Shape and size | Square, at least 8 × 8 pixels; larger than 48 × 48 recommended | Reads the size from the file itself |
| Format | BMP, GIF, ICO, PNG, JPEG, PPM or TIFF | Reads the format from the file itself, not its name |
| Everything else | A stable address, an icon that represents your brand, and nothing inappropriate | Can’t be checked from one visit – only you can judge |
A robots.txt that answers with a server error holds Google back too: Google stops crawling the site for the first 12 hours.
Once everything passes, inspect your home page with the URL Inspection tool in Search Console and choose Request indexing. Browsers can hold on to an old icon for a long time, as Squarespace’s help notes, so look at your site in a private window.
What size should a favicon be?
Square, at least 8 × 8 pixels, and – Google recommends – larger than 48 × 48. A square PNG of 96 × 96 or 192 × 192 pixels meets both, as does an .ico file whose largest size is over 48 × 48.
Some website builders’ help pages still say Google needs a multiple of 48 pixels. Google’s guidelines, whose size rules changed in October 2024, don’t ask for that, but 96 × 96 suits both.
Our checker fails an icon that isn’t square or is under 8 × 8, and adds a note when it’s 48 × 48 or smaller; for an .ico file, it checks the largest image inside. Shopify reduces a larger favicon to 32 × 32 when you upload it, so expect that note on a Shopify site.
Can a favicon be an SVG?
Browsers can use one, but Google doesn’t list SVG – or WebP or AVIF – among its favicon formats. Keep your SVG and add a PNG or ICO alongside it.
All the main browsers – Chrome, Edge, Firefox and, since version 26, Safari – can show an SVG icon in a tab. In Chrome, Edge and Firefox an SVG icon can even change colour in dark mode, as web.dev’s adaptive favicon guide shows. For Google, add a second link, such as <link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="96x96" href="/favicon-96x96.png">. When you link both, our checker opens the PNG or ICO.
It warns about an SVG, WebP or AVIF icon, and fails one only when it’s the only icon we found, with nothing linked. If your link says PNG but the file arrives as WebP, an image service has probably converted it, and the checker says so.
How do I add a favicon in WordPress, Squarespace, Wix or Shopify?
Each has a setting that uploads the icon and adds the link for you.
WordPress
Since WordPress 6.5, go to Settings › General and click Choose a Site Icon; in older versions it’s under Appearance › Customize › Site Identity. WordPress’s favicon guide asks for a square image at least 512 × 512 pixels, and recommends PNG.
Squarespace
In Settings › Website, open the Favicon panel, drag your image into the uploader – you can add a dark mode version too – then click Save. Squarespace’s favicon guide recommends a PNG between 100 × 100 and 300 × 300 pixels, no more than 100 KB. Until you add one, your site shows Squarespace’s cube.
Wix
You need a Premium plan, a connected domain and a published site. In your dashboard, go to Settings › Website settings and click Upload Image under Favicon. Wix’s favicon guide asks for a square that’s a multiple of 48 pixels, such as 96 × 96. It accepts SVG, but upload a PNG or ICO instead, as Google doesn’t list SVG.
Shopify
You need the Basic plan or higher. Go to Online Store, click Edit theme, then the gear icon for Theme settings. Open Logo or Favicon, depending on your theme, click Select image under Favicon image, then Done and Save (Shopify’s guide).
Next.js and other custom builds
In the Next.js App Router, put a favicon.ico or icon.png in the top level of the app folder and Next.js adds the links for you. On any other site, ask your developer to link a square PNG or ICO from the home page’s <head>.
Why can’t the checker read my site?
Usually because the site’s security turns away automated checks, or because it didn’t answer in time. The checker reads your home page, following up to 5 redirects, within 8 seconds and up to 2 MB, then asks for your robots.txt and one icon file.
If the home page can’t be read, choose “Paste your page’s HTML instead” and paste your home page’s HTML; that checks the icon links only. If we’re turned away from the icon or robots.txt, or they don’t answer in time, you get a note, not a fail: our checker isn’t Google, so that says nothing about what Google gets.
Reading your results
- Fail – the icon we checked breaks one of Google’s rules: robots.txt blocks your home page or icon, the file is missing or isn’t an image, or it isn’t square or is under 8 × 8. Or we couldn’t find a favicon at all. We open one icon file per check: when it’s missing, isn’t an image or is the wrong shape or size, the result names any other icon file you link, which Google may use instead.
- Warning – something that may stop Google showing it, such as an SVG, WebP or AVIF icon, no icon link, an icon written into the page as a
data:address rather than a file, or a robots.txt server error. - Note – worth knowing, such as an icon of 48 × 48 or smaller, an icon or robots.txt we couldn’t open, or an icon on another site.
- Pass – that part meets Google’s rules. When everything we check passes, the result says your favicon meets Google’s published rules – not that Google will show it.
The dark browser tab in our mock-ups shows whether your icon vanishes on a dark background, as a black logo on a transparent background can.
Common questions
How long does a new favicon take to show on Google?
Google says crawling can take several days to several weeks, and it doesn’t promise to show a favicon at all. Requesting indexing of your home page in Search Console asks it to look sooner. Then keep the icon at the same address: Google asks for a stable one.
Does a favicon help SEO?
Not as far as Google has said. Its favicon guidelines cover how the icon is shown beside your results, and say nothing about ranking.
What do you keep when I run a check?
Not your results. Pasted HTML is checked in memory and never stored or logged, and nothing is fetched for it. For an address, we also open one icon file, which we don’t keep, and read the site’s robots.txt – a public file we may reuse for up to 10 minutes, so repeat checks don’t ask the site for it again. For 7 days we keep a short log of each check: the tool, the domain, the outcome, how long it took and a code for your connection that changes daily. We never store your IP address, and the counts behind the daily limits are deleted after 48 hours. Cloudflare, which runs the checker and its Turnstile bot check, does process your IP address. Our privacy policy and About our checker have the details.
Favicons are part of the logo work in our brand development service. Get in touch and we’ll take a look at yours.
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