The favicon declaration, image or crawler access does not meet the checked requirements

Why it matters

Google says a favicon must be a square of at least 8 by 8 pixels and recommends one larger than 48 by 48 pixels. It also says Googlebot-Image must be able to crawl the favicon file and Googlebot must be able to crawl the home page.

What to do

1. Look at the finding: it shows each icon declared on the homepage with its address, status, measured size and the robots.txt answer for the image crawler.
2. Add <link rel="icon" href="/favicon.png"> to the head of your homepage, pointing to a square image. Google recommends more than 48 by 48 pixels.
3. Make sure robots.txt lets Googlebot fetch the homepage and Googlebot-Image fetch the icon, also when the icon is on a CDN.

When to leave it as it is: if you do not need a favicon beside your search results, you can leave it. It does not affect how your pages are crawled or indexed.

What we read

We read the head of your homepage for link elements with rel set to icon, shortcut icon, apple-touch-icon or apple-touch-icon-precomposed. If there is none, that alone is reported, whatever /favicon.ico answers.

Each declared icon is requested and its width and height are read from the image header; for an ICO file, from every supported image header inside it. We also read robots.txt on the icon's own host for Googlebot-Image and on your site for Googlebot's homepage access. With declarations present, the check can report confirmed unusability of every possible icon or independently confirmed Googlebot blocking of the homepage when required source coverage is complete. Mixed or unread icon alternatives leave coverage incomplete and cannot prove a fix.

Example & evidence

Illustrative example — one audit, not a live result.

The homepage of bakery.example declares one icon:

<link rel="icon" href="/img/logo-wide.png">

GET https://bakery.example/img/logo-wide.png   200 image/png   120 x 40 pixels

The only declared icon is not square, so the site is reported. A possible correction: the link points to a 96 by 96 pixel image that robots.txt allows; nothing is then reported.

Confirm & check again

Check for yourself: view the source of your homepage, find the link elements whose rel contains icon, open each address and check that the image is square.

Check again: Full audit — run a new audit of the site. Closure requires a completely read homepage head, confirmed Googlebot homepage access, and usable declared icon targets with confirmed Googlebot-Image access. A single unambiguous declared target can qualify; when several distinct targets remain possible, all must qualify. Mixed or unread alternatives leave the result unconfirmed.

Limits & sources

When some declared icons are usable and others are not, or one could not be read, nothing is reported and nothing is passed: the check does not guess which icon a search engine would pick. The same holds for an ICO file that holds both square and other images, or an image that could not be read.

Sizes are read for PNG, GIF, JPEG and ICO files. Other formats, including SVG and WebP, a generic media type such as application/octet-stream, and a media type that contradicts the file are left unconfirmed.

Width and height come from the file header. The check does not decode the image, so it cannot tell whether the picture displays correctly or represents your brand, and it does not show whether Google displays the icon.

An icon on another host is assessed only when that host's robots.txt was read during the audit.

Confidence: High because the original declaration, response, header geometry and separate crawler permissions are retained. Findings describe a complete-head missing declaration, confirmed unusability of every possible icon, or confirmed Googlebot homepage blocking; incomplete or mixed evidence cannot prove a fix.

Sources

• Google, Define a favicon to show in search results — says a favicon must be a square of at least 8 by 8 pixels, recommends one larger than 48 by 48 pixels, lists the supported rel values including apple-touch-icon, says the file may be hosted on a CDN, and requires that Googlebot-Image can crawl the favicon and Googlebot the home page. Checked 14 October 2026.
• Microsoft, The evolution of the ICO file format, part 1: Monochrome beginnings — describes the ICO directory, where a width or height of 0 stands for 256, and the bitmap header whose height is double the image height. Checked 14 October 2026.

Editorial review: 15 October 2026