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A certain level of importance of a favicon does exist – especially now since the favicon shows up in Google search results. But what is a favicon, and how do we create them? That’s what I’ll discuss in this article, including:
What are favicons?
Favicons are small icons that represent the brand of a website. These could be a smaller version of the company’s logo, an abbreviated logo version, or something else that visually represents the brand.
Here are a few examples:
- The City of Marion, IA – the city’s M and logo
- Apple – the apple that we’ve grown accustomed to from MacBooks, iPads, and other Apple products
- YouTube – the red video screen with play button
- Wikipedia – the brand W
In essence, a favicon – which stands for favorite icon – is a small logo or representation of the brand. Sometimes, favicons are called site icons.
Read next: Here’s why to never use social media logos in your printed marketing
How to create a favicon?
Chances are you might already have a logo that you can use. For example, the Twitter logo from your brand page might work. Those images are 400×400 pixels, and site icons are recommended to be 512×512 pixels, so the dimensions are very similar to begin with.
If you have to create a site icon from scratch, consider:
- Aligning it with the current brand guidelines and ensuring it fits the overall brand design
- Use Canva.com
- Hire freelance design help
Where to use the favicon?
Then the site icon must be uploaded correctly to the website to appear in the nav bar in some browsers, preview links, and Google searches. On this blog, a self-hosted WordPress site with a free theme, I could upload it in the appearance section for my site’s theme.
Final thoughts on the importance of a favicon
At the end of the day, favicons are easy to overlook, but the little details matter. How can we get the big things right if we can’t get the small ones done correctly? And having a branded favicon carries the visual branding through on Google search results pages.