Favicon

A favicon is a small image that can be displayed:

  • In a snippet.
  • In Yandex search results.
  • Next to a site address in your browser's address bar.
  • Next to the name of a site in Favorites or Bookmarks in your browser.

The favicon helps users find your site faster and recognize it easier in search results.

Example of a favicon:

Example of favicons displayed in the search results:

How do I install a favicon?

Step 1. Place a favicon on the site

  1. Place a file with the name favicon in the site's root directory.

    Recommendations on the format, size, and appearance of favicons

    Size: 120 × 120, 32 × 32, or 16 × 16 pixels.

    Format: SVG (recommended), ICO, GIF, JPEG, PNG, or BMP. Animation is not supported.

    Tip

    Use 120 × 120 pixels or the SVG format to make the site logo clearer and more noticeable in Yandex services.

  2. Add the file link to the HTML code of the main site page, in the head element.

    <head>
    ...
    <link rel="icon" href="https://example.com/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
    ...
</head>

    Attribute

    Description

    Possible values

    rel

    Resource type
    • icon;
    • shortcut icon.

    href

    File URL

    To enter a Cyrillic URL of a favicon, use Punycode. For example, for the address https://мой-сайт.рф/favicon.ico, specify https://xn----8sbzclmxk.xn--p1ai/favicon.ico.

    type

    Data type to be sent. Depends on the file format
    • image/svg+xml for SVG format.
    • image/x-icon or image/vnd.microsoft.icon for the ICO format.
    • image/gif for the GIF format.
    • image/jpeg for the JPEG format.
    • image/png for PNG format.
    • image/bmp for the BMP format.

    If your page's HTML code contains multiple favicon links, the robot can select any of them.

  3. Check if the favicon is displayed in the browser when viewing your site's pages.

Step 2. Check the if the icon is available for the Yandex robot

  1. Make sure that:

    • The file is accessible via a direct link (server response 200 OK). Use the Server response check tool.
    • The file is not prohibited for indexing (for example, in the robots.txt file with the Disallow directive). Check prohibitions not only for the file itself, but also for the file directory.

  2. Make changes if necessary.

  3. Check if the robot loaded the file. This may happen when the robot visits your site. A few days after adding the favicon to the site, go to Website optimization → Site diagnostics in Yandex Webmaster. If you see a warning about favicon problems in the Possible problems section, follow the instructions:

    Error

    Solution

    The file responds with an HTTP code other than 200 OK

    Check the server response. The response should be 200 OK.
    For other response statuses, see Server response check.

    The file redirects to another URL

    Incorrect data type

    Check the type parameter value in the file link. It should match the file format.

    To make sure your favicon is loaded, go to Website optimization → Site diagnostics, click View list of everything being checked by Webmaster, and find the favicon warning. If it shows the Everything is OK, it means that the robot processed the file.

Step 3. Check how the favicon is displayed in search results

If the robot downloaded the favicon, it will appear in search results within two weeks.

For your favicon to be displayed correctly in search results, we recommend that you choose an image that looks good in both the dark theme and the light theme. The favicon background color doesn't always affect its display. It can be transparent or a solid fill.

How are favicons displayed in Yandex services?

Any favicon that is accessible to the robot and meets the requirements of the service where it's going to be shown, can be used for display. This means, if there are multiple favicons of different sizes or formats on your site, Yandex services can use any of them.

The robot can also download your favicon from the apple-touch-icon tag.

If the robot can't access your site during indexing, search results might display your hosting provider's favicon instead of yours.

How do I edit or delete a favicon?

To change the favicon that is displayed in search results, update the favicon file on your site.

To delete the favicon from the search, delete the file from the site. Changes will take effect within two weeks after the robot crawls your site next time.

To make your changes appear in search results sooner, submit your site's home page (where the favicon link was placed) for reindexing: open Yandex Webmaster and go to Indexing → Reindex pages. The favicon will update in the search results within three days.

Contact support

Tell us what your question is about so we can direct you to the right specialist:

If all favicon placement requirements are met, it should be indexed and appear in search results within about two weeks.

It has been more than two weeks, and the favicon still has not appeared

The favicon might disappear from search if it wasn't added to the database during the latest update. This is possible if the site or its hosting were unavailable when they were crawled by the special robot.

Please also make sure that the favicon is placed correctly. If it is specified correctly, wait for the next update of the favicon database, which takes about two weeks.

It has been more than two weeks, and the favicon still has not appeared

This may happen if:

  • Different site favicons are place at different URLs. If a site can be accessed at URLs with or without the "www" prefix, and both via the HTTPS or HTTP protocols, make sure that the favicon is the same everywhere, or the one that should be indexed for each of the sites.
  • The site is temporarily unavailable. In this case, the robot might download the hosting favicon from the site's parked page.

If these causes are resolved and you've followed the guidelines for placing the favicon, the changes will appear in search results within two weeks after they are crawled by the robot.

Recommendations didn't help and more than two weeks has passed



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