Favicon and touch icon
Also known as site icon · apple-touch-icon · shortcut icon
Small site icons declared via <link rel="icon"> and <link rel="apple-touch-icon"> that appear in browser tabs, bookmarks, mobile home screens, and search results.
What it is
A favicon is the small brand icon shown on a browser tab and in bookmarks, declared with a <link rel="icon"> tag (or a root favicon.ico). An apple-touch-icon is a larger square icon iOS and Android use when a user saves the site to their home screen.
Why it matters
Favicons reinforce brand recognition wherever your URL appears, including Google's mobile search results, which display the site icon next to listings. A crisp, consistent icon strengthens the brand and entity signals that AI engines associate with your domain, improving trust and recall.
How to verify
View source and confirm <link rel="icon"> and <link rel="apple-touch-icon"> in <head>, and check that the icon files load without 404s. Look at the browser tab and use Search Console or a SERP preview to confirm Google has picked up the favicon.
How to fix
Provide a square favicon at least 48x48 px (ideally a multiple of 48) referenced with <link rel="icon">, plus a 180x180 apple-touch-icon, and keep a fallback favicon.ico at the site root. Use the same image origin and a stable URL so search engines can reliably crawl and display it.
Related terms
- Open Graph and Twitter Card tagsOpen Graph and Twitter Card meta tags tell social platforms and chat apps how to render a link preview: its title, description, and image.
- Viewport meta tagA <meta name="viewport"> tag tells mobile browsers to match the layout width to the device screen, enabling responsive, mobile-friendly rendering.
- Organization / WebSite SchemaStructured data that declares the entity behind a site using schema.org Organization (name, URL, logo, social profiles) and WebSite (site name, search action). It establishes who you are for search engines and answer engines.
- Title tagThe <title> element in a page's <head> defines its canonical name, shown as the clickable headline in search results and as the browser tab label.
Official references
- MDN: The External Resource Link element <link>
- Google Search Central: Define a favicon to show in search results
External, opens in a new tab.
Put this into practice.
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