An attractive ‘favicon’ can draw attention to a Google result and increase its clickthrough rate. Here’s how to make it work.
Google has been playing around with icons in the results for a while now – this sort of thing:
Now, it goes without saying that the appearance of an icon next to an entry isn’t going to be an SEO benefit in itself. However, there seems to be some evidence that an attractive one can draw attention to a result and increase its clickthrough rate.
The icon is taken from the website’s “favicon” file. Find out how to set up a favicon here, and to check what your site’s favicon looks like, paste the URL below into a browser, changing the site domain at the end:
https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?sz=256&domain=bmon.co.uk
Our favicon at BMON (above) needs improvement to stand out in the Google results. I would suggest that there are two things to take into account when redesigning it. The first is to make it high contrast, with a dark background; the second is to ensure the content looks good when cropped to a circle.