In this article, we explain what a favicon is, what value it has, and why a favicon is now more important than ever to implement on your website.
What is a favicon?
A favicon can simply be explained as the icon that represents a website in various ways. In modern web browsers, a site’s favicon appears to the left of your tabs,
in connection with your saved bookmarks,
and nowadays also in another important place, which we will return to a little later in this article…
Why should you implement a favicon – what is its value?
Historically, the main reasons for implementing a favicon on a website have been related to branding and user experience. A favicon helps strengthen a site’s or company’s brand and makes it easier for users to find their way back to your site when, for example, navigating through a sea of different tabs.
This alone justifies implementing a favicon on your website—especially when weighing the benefit against how simple the implementation actually is. However, due to certain circumstances, the favicon can now be attributed an even greater value.
A change in the mobile SERP has increased the value of the favicon
Those of you who keep up with developments in the SEO and SEM world may already have noticed that the mobile search results have recently undergone a visual change. The underlying reason is most likely that Google has optimized for more ad clicks by more closely integrating ads with the regular search results, as this is the company’s primary source of revenue.
In the image below, you can see how Google’s ads are now marked with a small ad icon, while regular search results are instead marked either by their own implemented favicon or by a generic globe icon.
This change has led to a number of different consequences (which we will not go into in this article), one of which is the increased value of a website’s favicon.
Here are a few advantages that a site with a well-designed, clear, and unique favicon can enjoy compared to a site that relies solely on the generic favicon:
• Increased trust – especially if your brand is already relatively well known among the general public or at least within your industry
• Increased visibility – by standing out from other search results, in a similar way to rich snippets
• Increased click-through rate (CTR) – a positive effect directly linked to the points above
• Potentially better rankings – due to the positive user signal that an increased CTR sends
In conclusion
Whether you belong to the group of webmasters, companies, or site owners who have already implemented a favicon or not, it should now at least be clear what its value is and why it should be done. Those of you who already have this in place can take comfort in that insight, and the rest of you will hopefully feel sufficiently motivated to take action as soon as possible. Only then will I have achieved the goal of this article!
