How do I specify a website favicon for Google Search?

Definition: A favicon is an icon representing a page or website. As of 17 October 2026, Google's documented setup for organic search results uses an icon link on the homepage and an image that meets its favicon guidelines.

Key facts

• Google's favicon guidelines require a square image of at least 8 × 8 pixels and recommend dimensions larger than 48 × 48 pixels.
• The HTML standard defines rel="icon"; its sizes attribute describes icon dimensions in raw pixels.
• Google's common crawler documentation says these crawlers obey robots.txt rules during automatic crawling. Rules for Googlebot-Image affect Search features that display favicons.

Where does the icon link go?

Google's implementation instructions place this element in the homepage's HTML head:

<link rel="icon" href="/path/to/favicon.ico">

The rel attribute identifies the resource as an icon, and href supplies its URL. Google accepts a relative path or an absolute URL, including an image hosted on a content delivery network. The same documentation also accepts shortcut icon, apple-touch-icon and apple-touch-icon-precomposed as rel values.

The HTML standard's icon rules also describe type, media and sizes attributes, which browsers use to select among multiple icons. Values in sizes must correspond to dimensions actually available in the linked image. Declaring a larger size in the markup therefore requires an image containing that size.

Which images are eligible?

Google's image requirements specify a square aspect ratio of 1:1. Supported favicon formats are BMP, GIF, ICO, PNG, JPEG, PPM and TIFF. The image must visually represent the website's brand, and its URL must remain stable rather than change frequently.

Googlebot-Image must be able to crawl the favicon file, while Googlebot must be able to crawl the homepage. Google replaces imagery it considers inappropriate, including pornography or hate symbols, with a default icon.

What should be checked after a change?

The homepage link's href identifies the file whose crawl access matters. Google's crawler reference lists the image crawler's HTTP user-agent string as:

Googlebot-Image/1.0

The same reference lists Googlebot-Image and Googlebot as its robots.txt user-agent tokens. Applicable robots.txt restrictions therefore belong in the access check alongside the homepage's Googlebot access.

Google's favicon implementation instructions say it needs to recrawl and process the homepage after a change. Crawling can take several days to several weeks. The URL Inspection tool provides a way to request indexing of the homepage.

Related terms

• Googlebot-Image
• Googlebot
• robots.txt

FAQ

Can I set different favicons for different website sections?

Google's hostname rule supports one favicon per hostname. You can use different icons for www.example.com and code.example.com; subdirectories on the same hostname share its favicon.

Does meeting every requirement ensure that my icon appears?

The same favicon guidelines state that an eligible icon may still be absent from search results.

Sources

1. Google Search Central, "Define a favicon to show in search results", updated 28 August 2026
2. WHATWG, "HTML Standard", Link type "icon", updated 16 October 2026
3. Google Crawling Infrastructure, "List of Google's common crawlers", updated 15 October 2026

---

Check how a page reads to answer engines. Open the GEO score analyzer