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Your site has an icon for the browser tab
seo.missing-favicon
Why this matters
The small icon beside a page's name identifies a site in a row of twenty open tabs, in a bookmark list, and — since Google started showing it — beside every mobile search result. Without one, a browser draws a blank sheet of paper, which is the visual equivalent of an unbranded envelope. It is among the cheapest things on any audit to put right and among the most consistently overlooked, because the person who built the site has it cached and sees an icon that nobody else does.
Who fixes it
You can, usually
Roughly how long
20 minutes
Care needed
Low risk to change
How to fix it
Put a square PNG of at least 48 by 48 pixels at `/favicon.ico` or wherever your `<link rel="icon">` points, and add an `apple-touch-icon` at 180 by 180 for anyone saving the site to a phone's home screen. Check it in a private window afterwards — a normal one will keep showing you a cached copy of the old icon for a long time, which is how this goes unnoticed.
How we score it
Failing this check takes up to 5 points off your search score. It is a fact about your site rather than a measurement, so it reads the same on every scan until you change something.
Does your site pass this one?
This check runs on every scan, along with the other 106. Free, no account, and you see the evidence for each result.
Check my siteOther search checks
- Canonical tags point somewhere validA canonical tag tells Google which address is the real one for a page. When it points somewhere wrong — another domain, a dead page, or the wrong protocol — Google follows it anyway, and the page you wanted indexed can be dropped in favour of one that does not exist.
- Content has been updated recentlySome content is meant to sit still, and age alone is not a fault. But prices, opening hours and staff pages that have not been touched in over a year are usually wrong by now — and a visitor who acts on the wrong opening hours does not come back to check whether the rest was right.
- Descriptions are a sensible lengthLong descriptions get truncated mid-sentence; very short ones waste the space you are given.
- Each page has exactly one title tagA page can only have one title. When there are several, the browser and Google each pick one — and they do not always pick the same one, so what you see in the tab may not be what appears in search.
- Each page has one main headingSeveral top-level headings makes the structure of the page ambiguous. Worth checking rather than urgent — modern HTML permits it, and Google handles it, but it usually signals that headings are being chosen for their size.
- Every page has a main headingThe h1 is the headline of the page. Without one, both visitors skimming and search engines parsing the page have nothing telling them what it is about.