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Favicon issues in Bing search results and how to fix them

Fix favicon issues in Bing search results with our tips.

A favicon, which is short for favorite icon, is a small icon that appears in the address bar of the browser. Websites are usually recognized and identified by their favicons. This article describes how to fix the problem with not seeing your favicon in the Bing search results.

Bing search results for "sitelint" phrase that shows the favicon next to the site URL

One of the most popular issue with Bing search results is not displaying your updated site favicon. There is even quite popular post on the Microsoft Community forum called The site’s favicon is not displayed in Bing search results.

There might be several reasons of not seeing your favicon in Bing search results.

Troubleshooting tips

Ensure the favicon has a valid format

The website must have a valid favicon file (in .ico, .png, or .svg format) and it must be at least 16×16 pixels in size. Use Favicon checker to generate correct favicon format and size.

We recommend using SVG format. Use SVG Favicon Generator for generating favicon in SVG format.

Ensure the favicon has correct URL location

It is important to have a valid URL to the favicon. Some suggest having it in the root directory.

Search engines do not require favicons to be listed in sitemaps

Favicons are typically small icons associated with a webpage and are not considered indexable content by search engines. Including them in a sitemap does not contribute to improving the visibility of the favicon in search engine results.

While Bing has previously suggested that including the favicon URL in the sitemap could be beneficial, this requirement seems to be less strict or outdated compared to other search engines like Google. Many websites without favicon entries in their sitemaps still display favicons correctly in search engine results.

In general, ensure your website sitemap.xml does not include the URL of the favicon file.

The current SEO and web development best practices suggest focusing sitemap entries on indexable content pages. Including non-indexable resources like favicons could potentially dilute the effectiveness of your sitemap by adding noise to what should be a clear signal to search engines about your site’s structure and content.

Correct implementation in the HTML code

The presence of a favicon is indicated by a <link> element in the HTML head section of a webpage, specifying the path to the favicon file.

Ensure the favicon is implemented correctly in the HTML code. We use the following code:

Implementing favicon in HTML example
<link rel="icon" type="image/svg+xml" href="/favicon.svg">
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/favicon.png">

Ensure the favicon file is not blocked by robots.txt

Check that the website’s robots.txt file does not restrict favicon access. The favicon file might be blocked by robots.txt rules or server configurations, preventing Bing’s crawler from accessing it.

Bing’s crawler has not yet updated the website’s information in its index

Bing may take some time to display the favicon, as it needs to crawl and update the website data. There may also be caching issues, where Bing is still displaying an old cached version of the website without or outdated the favicon.

Contact Bing Webmaster Support

When everything fails, then the best way to update your favicon is to contact Bing Webmaster Support, and they will update it for you. That helped us.

Here are the steps:

  • Go to Support for webmasters and site owners page.
  • Locate the link Raise support request. Note that you must be signed in with a Microsoft, Google, or Facebook account.
  • Once you get on the page Fill the form for Bing Webmaster tools support:
    • on Choose the website you need help with? select your website
    • then What type of problem do you have? select Bad Search Result
    • then on What do you need help with? select Other and describe your issue with the website you have selected.

Handy tips for favicon verification

Grab favicon.ico using the developer tools for Google Chrome

Here’s a tool that’s actually part of Google Chrome. In the address bar, enter chrome://favicon/, followed by the URL.

Example: chrome://favicon/https://www.sitelint.com

Determine if a favicon exists on your site

Use Favicon Checker. It is a free tool to check that a favicon has been successfully implemented on your site.

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