What is a favicon?
Favicons are small graphics that contain an element of a company’s logo to improve user experience by helping you easily recognise a brand’s website; you could almost think of them as a little ID card. A website developer’s attention to detail can be measured by whether they have set up a favicon or not and with businesses in all industries facing stiff competition and an increasingly crowded market, ensuring that any website they are designing has a favicon should really be top of their list.
How do I find a favicon?
Favicons are displayed on your browser’s address bar when you’re browsing a website, and also next to a page’s name in the bookmarks tab and search history.
Why are they so important?
Favicons have always been essential in the same way as any activity a company undertakes to build their brand’s identity. However, as of January 2020 there’s another very important reason why they can’t be ignored, and that’s Google – have we got your attention now? 🤓
Last week, Google made some changes to the way the search engine displays results on desktops. Starting now, search results will now display the favicon for the website they link to. Google says that the reason behind the change is to give websites an opportunity to increase their brand exposure and also to allow users to quickly identify where the information they’ve searched for is coming from, ultimately improving user experience.
However, it appears that this has been incredibly beneficial for Google as since the change was rolled out Google Search advertisers have seen a 4% – 10.5% increase in their click-through rate from desktop, according to a recent industry report. It’s made the distinction between ads and organic search results less visible, and as a result Google is now reviewing the update and carrying out tests involving the placement of favicons in search results.
Nevertheless, it is still likely that Google will display search results in order of those with favicons. So to stay at the top of those rankings you will need to contact your web designer and ask them to update your website with a favicon – tell them I sent you… and say they should have delivered with the favicon built in, in the first place!
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