A Tip from Google on Favicons can Have a Significant Impact

John Mueller from Google provided an unofficial tip for enhancing favicons that could boost their effectiveness. He commented on a LinkedIn post discussing the visual influence of favicons in search results, suggesting a strategy that isn’t formally documented but may enhance their visibility.

Favicons are tiny icons that symbolize a website’s brand, appearing in browser tabs, bookmarks, browsing history, and search engine results pages (SERPs). They enhance brand visibility, attract attention, and facilitate brand identification in search results

A LinkedIn post by Mark Williams-Cook emphasized the importance of a well-designed favicon in search results, suggesting that it could influence user interactions with those results.

This sparked a conversation where participants noted that an attention-grabbing favicon can enhance visibility in search results and is particularly beneficial for SearchGPT.

The accompanying screenshot illustrates how certain favicons merge into the background of search results, while two of them are more prominent, especially one featuring a vibrant color palette.

A unique favicon won’t improve a site’s ranking, but as demonstrated above, it can make the page more noticeable in search results.## A Helpful Hint for Favicons.John Mueller’s comment on favicons highlights a point that seems obvious yet is absent from official favicon documentation. He noted that it’s beneficial for a favicon to look appealing when cropped into a circle.

Here’s what Mueller stated:

Round-croppable favicons, for those interested in technical SEO.

Creating a favicon that appears attractive when circular is something that may seem clear in hindsight but can easily be missed. Evaluating a favicon based on its appearance when cropped into a circle implies the importance of testing how it looks in that format or even designing it specifically to fit well within a circular shape, ensuring it utilizes the entire space when displayed in search results or elsewhere.

None of Google’s guidelines on favicons mention the circular cropping or suggest that designing them in a round format could be advantageous.

This advice may seem minor and straightforward, but it can significantly impact results.

Check out the LinkedIn discussion here:

I imagine custom favicons make an actual difference with SERP interaction…

Explore Google’s Favicon documentation

Define a favicon to show in search results

Landing page guidelines – Favicons

Visual Elements gallery of Google Search – Attribution