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The most common cause is that the file declared in your page’s <link rel="icon"> or the implicit fallback /favicon.ico returns a 404 or is served in a format the browser cannot render. Run your URL through Favitest — it will show you exactly which files are missing, which exist, and which have a format mismatch. Common fixes:

• Place a favicon.ico (or a declared SVG/PNG icon) at your site root.
• Ensure the icon file is accessible (no authentication, no X-Robots-Tag that blocks it).
• Check that the type attribute on your <link> matches the actual file format.

Two things could be happening:

1. The browser is caching the old icon. Try a hard refresh (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+R), or open the page in a private/incognito window.
2. The new file isn’t being served. Your old icon might be cached by a CDN, or your deployment never updated the file on the server. Use Favitest to check what is actually being served right now — if the tool shows the old dimensions or the old file content, the problem is server-side, not your browser cache.

You can also append a cache-busting query string to your icon URL, e.g. <link rel="icon" href="/favicon.svg?v=2">.

Yes. Favitest looks for:

• Any <link rel="apple-touch-icon"> declarations in the page HTML.
• The implicit fallback /apple-touch-icon.png at the site root — iOS will request this file even if no explicit declaration exists.

Each found icon is fetched and reported with its dimensions, format, and HTTP status. If neither the declaration nor the fallback returns a valid icon, the iOS homescreen context card shows Missing.

Favitest reads and validates binary headers for the following formats:

• ICO — the classic favicon.ico format
• PNG — the most widely recommended modern format
• SVG — scalable vector icons
• GIF — rarely used but valid for favicons
• JPEG — technically valid though uncommon

If a file’s binary header does not match its declared type attribute (or doesn’t match any known format), Favitest flags it as a format mismatch. For example, a PNG served with type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon" will fail to render as a favicon.

Google uses the icon declarations in your page HTML to display a brand icon next to your search result. Specifically, Google looks for:

• <link rel="icon"> with a valid image file
• The icon must be at least 48×48 pixels (Google’s stated minimum). ICO files with multiple sizes work if they include a 48×48 frame.

Favitest’s Search result context card shows which icon Google would use. If it says Missing, check that you have at least one declared icon that meets the size threshold. Note that Google’s crawl can be delayed — a correctly configured icon may take days or weeks to appear in search results.

A format mismatch means the HTTP response headers or the <link> element’s type attribute claim one format, but the actual file content (the binary header bytes) indicates a different format. For example:

• A <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/favicon.ico"> that actually serves an ICO file.
• An .ico file served with Content-Type: image/svg+xml.

Browsers and search engines use the type attribute or the Content-Type header to decide how to interpret the file. If they expect PNG and receive ICO bytes, the icon may not render — even though the file is technically present. Fix by ensuring the type attribute and the file extension/Content-Type all agree.