Frequently Asked Questions About Favicons
Along With Solutions When They Don't Work

A favicon (short for Favorites Icon) is a website feature that makes it possible to associate a special logo or other small graphic with a web page. The icon appears in the browser address bar, preceding the website url. The same favicon will also display for the site in your bookmarks, or favorites menu, described by the page title.

Similar to the way that shortcut icons are used on the computer desktop to distinguish computer programs and files, favicons can be used to distinguish, personalize and brand your web site.


Standing out as they do, and usually being free and easy to install, it's only sensible that you take a few moments to make a favicon and start using it on your website.


All of the updated versions of the major browsers support favicons, including Internet Explorer and Firefox. The latter usually being totally effortless, most problems with favicons occur while working with Internet Explorer. Here's some handy tips in the event you run into problems.

• First. Internet Explorer does not support animated favicons. If that's the issue you're facing, then you will never get the animated version working. You can still install it for Firefox.
  
  
• Be sure that you have tested the favicon by using our test feature after you create it. We provide a special link to test your actual favicon on one of our pages. It only takes a moment and if it displays properly, then there's nothing wrong with the favicon itself.
  
  
• Alternatively, you can type in the direct path to your favicon in your browsers address bar. If it displays on the page, then you know to move on. You can see an example of our favicon displayed in this fashion by clicking here. You might notice that we actually use a unique folder for our favicon which works just as well but if you choose that route, be sure to amend the favicon header information.
  
  
• Be sure to remove any links to the site in your favorites menu, followed by clearing your temporary internet files. Close your current browser before doing so, and don't navigate to your site before clearing your cache.
  
  
• After clearing your cache, navigate to your site again and add to favorites. Refresh your screen or close and open a new browser and most of the time your favicon will start displaying properly.
  
  
• If it's still not working at this point, try using a direct url path to the favicon in your header tags. Such as:
  
  <link rel="icon" href="http://www.YOUR-WEBSITE.com/favicon.ico" />
  
  <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.YOUR-WEBSITE.com/favicon.ico" />
  
  
• If you still don't display a favicon at this point, you might amend the header tags further. Older IE browsers were really obstinate about displaying favicons and this is one of the older tricks. We still use these tags ourselves because they seem to work much better with older IE versions.
  
  <link rel="icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon" />
  
  <link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon" />
  
  
• If, after all this, you still don't show a favicon in IE, then let it be for awhile. Try clearing your cache and refreshing everything in another day or two. Favicons are just little devils when it comes to Internet Explorer. If it's properly installed it will pop up eventually.